15 Christmas Tradition Ideas to Start with Your Kids {and a Quick Hickory Farms Giveaway!}

Lately, I've been making a lot of lists. A shopping list, meal list, cleaning list, and packing list for our long trip to visit family and more! Seems to happen a lot at this time of year!

One list that I have been focusing on is the one that contains ideas I've written down over the years for Christmas traditions we can do with our children. Now that they're 6, 4 and 1 1/2, they are really enjoying some of these activities and it really helps us to grow closer as a family as we start our own traditions. We really want to keep the focus on Jesus throughout this whole season!

Here are 15 fun and meaningful Christmas tradition ideas: some we've enjoyed these past few years and some we are looking at doing in the future. Check out my Christmas Traditions board on Pinterest for more ideas too.

1. Go to a tree farm and chop down or pick out a fresh-cut Christmas tree. Let your kids help in any way they can! Then bring it back, decorate it and have some hot chocolate to warm up.
2. Drive around looking at Christmas lights. We do this each year and have our favorite neighborhoods picked out now. We also add an ice-cream run to this little adventure and eat it in the van while we look at lights and listen to festive music.
3. Wrap up 24 Advent/Christmas/Holiday books and open one each day to read with your children. {related: a list of our 10 favorite Christmas books}.
4. Set up a nativity set in a reachable spot and let your children play with it throughout December.
5. Carol at a nursing home or go door to door with some other friends or family.
6. Make giving a tradition during this season. We support Samaritan's Purse, Prison Fellowship, Operation Christmas Child and our local Angel Tree location, food pantry and pregnancy center. There are many, many opportunities and you can get your kids involved by having them use some of their money or just pick something out if they are small.
7. Shop for a family in need. Ask at your church or community intervention center if they know of a family who will struggle to provide a holiday meal or gifts this year and shop for them. Have them delivered by the center or a friend so it's anonymous! Pray for the family receiving the gifts.
8. Do some Advent activities or a devotional each night with your kids. Help them glory and reflect on the real meaning of Christmas! This year, we're using Truth in the Tinsel! 
9. Keep the holiday season as simple as possible. I wrote a series on some ideas for making this happen, because it's tough to do! But it's worth it.
10. Turn on only the twinkling lights on display or light candles and sing a traditional song or carol before bed.
11. Here's an idea I got at a MOPS meeting: Wrap a shoe box and filled it with 3x5 blessing cards and have family members fill them out on Christmas Eve or throughout the holiday season {ex. "This year I was blessed with wonderful new neighbors."}. Take turns reading the cards on Christmas morning or New Year's Day. Save the cards and add to them throughout the years.
12. Have your children act out the Christmas story. Or act it out with them in front of your family and friends {come on, I know you can do it!}.
13. Open gifts on another day besides the usual day. One idea is to open them on Epiphany Sunday, the first Sunday following the new year. This is the when the wise men giving gifts to baby Jesus is recognized in the church.
14. Look for one homemade gift idea and then make a few for special people in your life who seem to have everything.
15. Finally, choose a traditional recipe or food that you love to eat and make sure to have it each Christmas! {I love Ritz crackers with peanut butter in the middle dipped in chocolate.} When my husband was growing up, his dad would always buy several boxes of Hickory Farms goodies: delicious summer sausage, gourmet cheeses and a sweet treat. He'd often buy them on clearance at the Hickory Farms store nearby and they'd eat them during family Christmas over New Year's weekend. And every year since I can remember, my aunt and uncle would send us a HUGE box of Hickory Farms deliciousness, which we would of course devour even before Christmas Day! Hickory Farms was a special part of both my husband's and my childhood. 

I'm thankful to the people at Hickory Farms for reminding me of this tradition. It kind-of makes you all warm and cozy inside remembering those moments and it makes me want to start it with our own children! 

They sent me a Family Favorites box to share with my family and boy, were we excited! It was devoured that same night for a light supper and my husband especially liked the smoked cheddar blend cheese {he hoarded it all for himself!}.

My 6 year old loved the beef summer sausage!

We made little "appetizers" with our cheese, beef and rosemary crackers

Hickory Farms really does have good food and perfect for holiday gift-giving. They offer a huge variety of baskets and boxes of meats, cheeses, crackers, specialty fruits and more! They also have special military gifts that they deliver FREE to any FPO/APO address. Having a brother-in-law stationed overseas in the military right now, this means a lot to us, because it's a good gift for someone who can't accumulate a lot of "stuff" but still deserves a gift.

Don't forget, too, that you can find Hickory Farms locations in kiosks in malls and stores across the country. They have awesome post-Christmas sales too!

Family Gathering Gift Basket, on sale for $43

Hickory Farms is giving away a Family Favorites gift box to one of my readers! This is going to be a super quick giveaway so they can get it out to you asap! Please enter in the Rafflecopter form below, only one simple click required. Giveaway will be open until midnight tonight, EST.

**Hickory Farms provided me with their product free of charge in exchange for a free and honest review. 
Shared at Weekend Whatever.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pin It