Christmas... a time of traditions!

Christmas time is special, it's a time where we celebrate many things and we try to do it as a family. Which isn't as easy as it sounds. My family all live 100s of miles away, as does my husbands family, and while we'd love to have both families stay over the Christmas period we just don't have the space for them all. So we share our Christmas between them as much as possible one year with his family, one year with mine!

Sharing your Christmas with another family highlights some of the different family traditions your own family has! Since it's Dec. 1st this Saturday I thought I'd share some of my family traditions with you.

Little hands help decorate

1st December - Choosing the tree! We always have a real tree, and DangerBaby & Daddy run off to our nearest Christmas Tree farm to choose the tree. Once the tree is up in the lounge we decorate, all taking turns to choose an ornament to hang on the tree after Mummy has put the lights on! We don't use tinsel on our tree but it still looks festive once all the decorations are on.


5th December - St Nicholas Day! On the evening of December 4th we put out a shoe onto our doorstep  or near the front door. If we're on Santa's good list he leaves us some sweeties in the shoe to find on the morning of the 5th December. If we're on the naughty list we may find coal in our shoe...

Chocolate decorations may
not last long!!

24th December - Christmas Eve! Everyone is allowed to open one present from under the tree on the night of Christmas Eve. This is the time that we remember and toast those members of the family that are not with us for Christmas (they maybe far away).

25th December - Present opening, lunch eating and Christmas day walk is all we have to do on this day! The Christmas Day walk is usually done in silly Christmas hats - a tradition started when my Dad walked out still with the paper hat from a cracker on his head one Christmas!

26th December - Boxing Day BBQ!! We invite all our friends & neighbours over for a BBQ, regardless of the weather. We drink mulled wine and stand outside cooking sausages, steaks, burgers... and play games on the wet lawn (we even tried croquet one year without knowing the rules... it was a bit Alice In Wonderland!). Being outside blows the cobwebs away and the mulled wine keeps you warm.

So when we start to plan a 'traditional' Christmas in our house these are the traditions we have. We try to give at least one traditional gift, last year DangerBaby was lucky to receive her memory quilt for Christmas. This year Daddy DayCare is receiving something special... and traditional!

unikgifts.co.uk