Jessica's Favorite Christmas Traditions

One of the best parts about Christmas is spending time with our families and celebrating all of our traditions together.  These are my family's favorite ones...what are yours? 


1.  Christmas Tree Traditions.  My family always strung popcorn to use as garland around the tree, and Jim's family always put red bows all over the tree...so we do both.  Although with a 2 year old little boy who eats everything in sight, we have opted to wait a few years to put popcorn on the tree again!

Another tradition I love is our ornaments.  All of ours are ones we've picked up on vacations or are handmade or were given to us as gifts.  I love it because every ornament has a special meaning or memory.  It's like flipping through the pages of a scrapbook when we decorate our tree.

 
2.  Gingerbread Houses.  Nearly every year, my family has an epic gingerbread house making day.

We come up with our ideas months in advance, draw up design plans, and keep it all hush hush - heaven forbid someone steal your idea!

Over the years, we've had some seriously good creations.  We've made Bag End from the Lord of the Rings (complete with Gandalf and staff ;)...

 
Snoopy's dog house (complete with the Charlie Brown Christmas tree ;)...

the Colts football stadium (complete with Super Bowl Champions banners ;)...

 
the Nativity scene, a covered bridge, Spongebob's Pineapple under the sea, a sandcastle, and so on...

And then we take ridiculous and silly family pictures we take afterwards...

Somehow our brother Matt always ends up at the bottom of the pile...

And now the kids end up under him...

We only like each other just a little if you couldn't tell ;)

I love seeing how our family grows every year!


3.  Celebrating Advent.  The kids have a cloth countdown calendar where they add a new character to the Nativity scene each day until Christmas.  They also have a Felt Nativity to play with that I made for them.  We light the candles on the Advent wreath every Sunday at dinner.  And this was my first year to use the Blessed is She's Advent Reflection Journal to prepare myself for Jesus's coming this Christmas...and it's been excellent.  I love it.

St. Nicholas Day!

We also celebrate several of the saint's feast days in December:  St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6) with treats in our shoes, St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec. 9 and 12) with watching and acting out their story and eating Mexican food, and St. Lucy (Dec. 13) with driving around looking at Christmas lights (the name Lucy means "light"). 

Our Lady of "Guada-loopy" as she says ;)

And speaking of that...


4.  Christmas Lights.  There are several places in town that have huge Christmas light displays...several of them coordinated with music too.  There's something about Christmas lights that are so magical!  Plus, I love hearing the kids squeal with excitement when they see them!


5.  Christmas Morning.  Last, but not least!  My favorite Christmas Day traditions are sitting at the top of the steps to read the Nativity story and then sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  He is the whole reason we celebrate Christmas, so we start off the day focusing on Him and His Birth!

Reading the Nativity story on Christmas morning

So what are some of your favorite Christmas traditions?  We hope you are having a blessed holiday season so far!  Can't believe it - less than 2 weeks to go now!!!

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