Starting to plan your holiday traditions? It seems early, but if you do holiday traditions around Thanksgiving, it isn't that early. So, let's plan, shall we? Every year in the United States, there are many holiday traditions you can do from Thanksgiving to the New Year, and we immediately take part in or host them. It is an excellent time to spend quality time with family. We will discuss some family holiday traditions as well as how to organize/plan your time to help you manage all the events that take place around this time.
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When Should You Start Holiday Traditions?
It's up to you when you want to start your holiday traditions. We started when the kids started preschool (ages 3-4). It was so much fun rediscovering our favorite childhood traditions.
Who should be involved in a holiday tradition?
You can include anyone you think will enjoy time with you and your family. Some years, we invited close friends with kids; other years, we took my kids' friends. An extended family is always a great option.
If you invite grandparents, be sure they can handle the walk or activity you plan.
47 Holiday Tradition Examples
You may be at a loss for what holiday traditions you want to add to your family's activities this year. So, to help, I added a bunch of them below. Each section shares a specific theme.
Traditions To Do at Home
This traditions-to-do-at-home section will share activities your family can do at home that cost little.
- Make your own Advent Calendar. This link is from Amazon (affiliate) (affiliate). They have a variety of options that will work for your family.
- Write a letter to Santa at the North Pole. The USPS Operation Santa is a great website to do this tradition.
- Read classic Holiday books like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (Amazon (affiliate) Affiliate) or Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore (Amazon (affiliate) Affiliate). We have been doing this every Christmas Eve since my kids were babies.
- Watch Christmas movies each night. Each year, we watch Charlie Brown's Christmas, The Santa Clause, It's a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas.
- Have a talent show or sing Christmas songs. If you have someone who plays instruments, you can have them perform while everyone else sings along. We have been doing this in recent years at a family member's house on Christmas Day. It's lots of fun.
- Introduce your family to The Elf on the Shelf. While I didn't do this tradition, I do know many friends who did. And their kids really enjoyed it.
- Have an ugly Christmas sweater event. Where everyone brings a sweater, and you add different embellishments to the sweater.
- Decorate the tree and add Christmas lights. Pull out ornaments (affiliate) that mean something special to your loved ones and have them add them to the tree.
- Send out holiday cards (Christmas cards) together. Have everyone sign their name on each card and have them help you set up the envelopes and mail the cards.
- For Kwanzaa, have the kids tell nightly folktales.
- Watch old holiday home movies with family and extended family.
- Assemble your artificial tree with the family.
- Start a puzzle during the kids' school break. And make it a goal to finish it before they go back.
- Get matching pajamas for the whole family. Have everyone wear them on Christmas Eve for Christmas morning picture time.
Traditions To Do Outside
Outdoor traditions are activities you can do with the family outside the home.
- Visit a tree farm, pick out a tree, and cut it down.
- At night, drive around the neighborhood and check out the holiday lights and decorations.
- Get a photographer and snap a family picture, then create holiday cards with the photos.
- Go to a Thanksgiving Day Parade and visit family after.
- Take pictures with Santa Claus. Bring the grandparents along.
- Celebrate winter solstice. Britannica shares 7 Winter Solstice Celebrations you may want to try.
- If you have snow during the holidays, you can host a snowman contest or a front-door decorating contest with the neighbors.
- Take a family walk during Hanukkah or on Christmas Day to a local public park or trail.
- Take a family bike ride to a nearby park.
- Visit a nearby nativity scene.
- Visit a nearby ice skating rink with the whole family.
- Go on a sleigh ride on a nearby hill.
- Set up the nativity scene together.
- Decorate the centerpiece together with the kids.
- Take your kids to a botanical garden. They usually decorate the area for the holidays. It is so pretty and a great way to do some walking.
Traditions with Food
This section includes traditions you can do with food.
- We love to bake around the holidays. We like to bake cookies while listening to Christmas music. Create cookie platters (affiliate) for family and friends.
- Create a hot chocolate bar and watch a holiday movie.
- Host a Cookie Swap event for the family or neighborhood.
- Make Gingerbread Houses. Here are some Gingerbread Houses on Amazon (affiliate).
- Throw a holiday party. When I was growing up, Christmas Eve was always celebrated with my parents' non-catholic friends. It was a fun time, and we had a potluck. My mom would make her homemade lasagna with homemade pasta. It was terrific, and we always looked forward to it.
- Make a delicious holiday dinner with the family. Get everyone involved and make a dish from your ancestors.
- Leave cookies out for Santa. Children can bake the cookies with you and share in creating a plateful for Santa.
- Create a festive Christmas brunch for the family, or go somewhere to have a Christmas brunch. Pick one or two dishes that everyone loves and make it each year.
Craft Traditions for the Entire Family
This section includes crafts you can do with your family.
- Make a holiday craft to display around the home. Visit our Christmas Decor DIY Projects you can do with your family.
- Decorate mini Christmas Trees for each room of the house. The Bedrooms are a great place for these little trees.
- Make ornaments (affiliate) with the children. Add the year to the ornament so the kids know when they made them.
- Make paper snowflakes and tape them to the windows.
- Create popcorn on a string and add peanut butter and seeds to make suet balls for the birds.
Traditions to Help Others
This section shares traditions to help others.
- Donate old and gently used toys. Check out our recent post: Where to Donate Baby Items or Charitable Locations to Donate Your Stuff for ideas on where to donate.
- Volunteer your family's time at a family shelter or donate food to a nearby food bank. Feeding America has a directory of all U.S. food banks.
- Do a book exchange with others to swap kids' books your children want to pass on.
- Visit a 24/7 care facility in your area and bring them small gifts or craft things the kids made for their tree.
- Visit a soup kitchen with your family to volunteer during the holidays. Stay clear of Thanksgiving. Try the days before or after Thanksgiving.
I hope these Holiday Traditions give you some ideas on what to include in your holiday checklist (affiliate). Now, let's make a holiday checklist (affiliate) to help you easily track these traditions.
Make a Holiday Traditions Checklist
First, make a list of all your holiday traditions (print out and use one sheet for each tradition) and note the dates you plan to do each. Then, on each sheet, do the following:
- Add the event's traditional name and date.
- Add the people you want to invite to this particular tradition.
- Enter the date you want to send out invitations.
- Add tasks to the list that include things you need to do before, during, and after the event.
- Email everyone invitations, or send them appointment reminders on the date and time of the event.
By sending a digital invitation through your Microsoft Outlook Calendar, iPhone or Android Calendar, or using Evite or Smilebox, similar websites, it will allow them to accept the traditional event easily, so you will get a response quickly.
Holiday Traditions Checklist
Here is a checklist (affiliate) to organize your holiday traditions. Use one sheet for each holiday tradition. Then, arrange them in a holiday binder (affiliate) for next year's reference.
Get your own printable by signing up for our newsletter below. You can get free copies of all of our ebooks, including a Holiday Planner ebook!
Now that you understand how to gather all the information for your traditions, here are some additional tips.
Tips when Planning Your Holiday Traditions
Planning in October is best! The beginning of November may be too late if you need to make reservations.
If you use a Holiday Traditions Checklist (affiliate) like the one above, you can easily reuse it each year to keep track of what you did and who you invited.
To keep track of all the holiday activities, you can keep them in a notebook divided into pocket folders, which can be included in a three-ring binder (affiliate). We label (affiliate) each pocket folder with self-stick tabs (affiliate). One tab for each holiday. It makes it super easy to find what we did the last year.
And the final tip is to start with only a few holiday traditions and see how it goes. When the kids get older, you may be able to add a few more. Overbooking yourself will just get more stressful for you and your family during this time of year.
Conclusion
Planning holiday traditions and writing down the tasks will ensure you do not miss any traditions and details that go along with them. Good luck, I hope this post helps you decide on your new family tradition and helps you jumpstart the planning process.
My favorite holiday tradition is to have our family holiday party at our home. If you have different holiday traditions, please share them in the comments below.
Please note that these are affiliate links through Amazon (affiliate), and at no additional cost to you, I will earn an affiliate fee if you decide to make a purchase.
Below are more holiday planning posts!
Julie Bestry says
Between not observing Christmas and being a family of three living in three different cities, our my family has never really been big on family traditions except those related to religious observances. (Of course, we go to the movies and eat Chinese food on Christmas, as one does!) Thanksgiving is the only holiday we've celebrated together in about 40 years, and we're pretty low-key: appetizers and dancing to Ella Fitzgerald before dinner, and listening to Alice's Restaurant while we clean up.)
However, I've always been intrigued as to how couples/newly blended families determine which traditions they will retain from their families of origin and how they might start new traditions. For people who have come from low-celebration backgrounds like mine, you've offered a bounty of ideas for designing rituals that will live on as families grow and change.
Sabrina Quairoli says
I'm glad it gave you some ideas, Julie. Traditions are so special for family and friends. It doesn't have to be just family that do traditions, it can be a group of girlfriends that spend the weekend together once a year or some people who go to a basketball or football game at a certain time each year. The connection to a group yearly is what matters and what makes it so memorable to every party member.
Julie Stobbe says
I love building traditions into the holiday season. It makes planning easy. You follow the traditions. They change over the years as family and friends get older. One new tradition my nephew started is taking the leftovers from the family's Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to the homeless encampment. We always play games as a family. When the kids were little it was ball hockey to get everyone outside to enjoy fresh air get some activity and empty the house so the food and dishes from the main course could be quickly cleaned up. Now we play a table game and laugh. I love the categories you set up for traditions to show they don't just revolve around food and entertaining.
Seana Turner says
I think traditions are one of the things my children really remember from growing up. We had them for holidays all year around. New to me is Diwali (sp?). My daughter is getting to enjoy the lights all around her apartment building.
Which traditions the family enjoys may change given the age of the family members, but it is nice to have a few. They can feel like an anchor during turbulent times. Great list of suggestions.
Janet Schiesl says
We love Holiday traditions, kids are older now but do remember so many things from when they were younger. I appreciate your thorough list, we also help a lot the less fortunate families however we can.
Linda Samuels says
What a great list of ideas! We don't celebrate Christmas, but we do celebrate many other holidays, like Thanksgiving and New Year's. Each has a cadence with their traditions, planning, and all.
I use a Word doc to plan events that I update each year. It works well and helps me remember the various steps to do, when, who to invite, and how to prepare. My husband and I tag team events together. We have a 'meeting' to discuss the basics, decide who is doing what, and then work together to host our family and friends. It's joyful to do.
Kim says
Hi Sabrina,
Really great ideas! I don't know if I would have anything to add. I do think that the idea of making some plans ourselves especially if we don't have a lot of family around is really great. Think about what we can initiate. I know that a lot of my clients are struggling and are alone so some of these ideas can be difficult for them. Christmas is a hard time for a lot of people.
Sabrina Quairoli says
I agree! As the planner or host, thinking about others during the holiday season and inviting them to family events could be the thing that helps lonely people through the holiday season.
Jana Arevalo says
I love the idea of keeping a list of your family traditions. That way, you don't forget, and you can make notes and remember how they went or something funny that happened from year to year. Thank you for the thorough list of traditions, I can't wait to try some of them out this year.
Sabrina Quairoli says
I'm glad you enjoyed it, Jana. I am a big fan of family traditions, especially during the holidays! I hope you create some amazing memories this holiday season.
Janet Barclay says
Great reminder about using our calendar to send invitations. I never remember to do that, even for business events.
Susan cooper says
Great idea. I know many holiday traditions are tweaked over the years until what you do barely resembles the original. It's important to write things down as you pass the tradition along.