Peace over pace, people.
Choose peace over pace in the rat race of holiday cheer. You and your family will thank you. I’ve been that mom that is so slammed that I can’t sit and enjoy the season with my family. Peace and presence to enjoy the present. Please.
Enough with the alliteration, eh? Onto the list!
Active Traditions:
In our home, we rotate traditions by their priority, and I break our family traditions list into two categories: active and inactive. The active traditions take more intention and more work. I only plan 3-5 of these each season with the intent on red lining one or two if things get tough. That is why I prioritize my traditions list each year, so the most valuable usually happen and I maintain peace over pace (See my 5 step pre-emptive holiday takeover plan).
- Advent Story – We read from an advent devotional or a Christmas book after dinner and before bed. It is listed under active because in the busyness of the season, it has to be planned for and on the calendar to be able to complete it.
- Sleep Under the Tree – The day we decorate our tree, we pop popcorn and watch a family Christmas movie and prepare a pallet for the kids to fall asleep under the tree…we move them to their beds before we go to sleep. It makes for a late night for us, so we take that into consideration when we put up our tree.
- Christmas Elves – In lieu of the Elf on a Shelf, we have three elves that visit at some point before Christmas, the timing varies. They move around most nights and operate similarly to the Elf on a Shelf, but they leave notes that challenge the children to be kind, compassionate and usually their antics involve an object lesson that is fun but meaningful. This takes the most work and it is also one that I have to do – “oy vey.” I have mixed feelings about the elf situation depending on the day.
- Christmas Ornament Craft – Most years, we make a different ornament craft I’ve pinned on Pinterest. They are usually super simple and sweet. It’s so fun to unpack them and hear the kids remember making them through the years.
- Christmas Cookies – The kids help me (sometimes) make the dough. I roll them out and bake them alone. The decorating bags stay good for a bit, so depending on timing we may decorate all in one night or spread out several shorter sessions. These are gifts we deliver to neighbors.
- Children’s Gingerbread Party – A fun, more recent tradition. We’ve used store bought and also built graham cracker ones. We invite a few people over and decorate together. This year we may just do a nature themed one outside and make them for the birds and wildlife with seeds and nuts. This is one of my 5 priorities this year, so it may not happen!
Passive Traditions:
I love the inactive traditions; they are ones that run themselves or take very little effort and in a particularly crazy holiday season these are my go-to traditions that run behind the scenes and check the tradition box without the overwhelm. Peace over pace, people. See more of what I mean about finding peace in holiday traditions here.
- Felt Advent Calendar – We had one of these growing up, it was one of my first purchases the year I became a Mom. Unpack and hang. Done.
- Children’s Nativity – An early motherhood discovery was how fun kids thought the nativity was to play with, but my Willow Tree one is a bit too precious for play. It now lives safely on the fireplace mantle and the kids have one they’ve helped make and a Fisher Price one that they can play with. My middle daughter especially loves to play with these and gets quite the party going with combining nativities. Nothing says Christmas like having two baby Jesus in the stable.
- Christmas Books – We keep the Christmas books we have been gifted or thrifted along with our yearly Christmas book (see next item on the list) in a big basket near the Christmas tree. It gets boxed up with our Christmas décor and unpacked each year. It’s an easy way to encourage our kids to read and also easy to read favorite Christmas books to them – visible and within reach.
- Christmas Eve Book – I purchase a Christmas book for our collection for our kids and their cousins and our former foster children each Christmas. It is my hope that by reading and owning the same Christmas books in their childhood that it will build a collective memory they can all share as they grow into adults. It gets opened Christmas Eve and read before bed.
- Christmas Eve Matching Pajamas – My cousin sends matching pj’s every year to my kids, we keep that present until Christmas Eve. They open their pj’s and their Christmas book, get changed and ready for bed, read to and to bed with dream of visions of sugar plums dancing over their heads…
- Christmas Bath – A few drops of green food coloring, a candle on the counter, Christmas music playing and some dollar store Christmas toys I picked up while shopping for stocking stuffers makes a fun experience and the result is a clean kid. This spontaneously happens once in December and sometimes it is after Christmas 😉
- Christmas Lights – One evening in December we drive around and look at Christmas lights as a family.
- Santa in the Firetruck – Our little town has a night the week before Christmas where Santa rides down each street on a firetruck with the sirens and lights. Its super fun and usually after bedtime so we grab them out of bed and stand in the lawn in our pj’s waving to Santa. The only work is notating the reminder in my calendar to check the Facebook page of the firehouse and notate the day they will be rolling through. We never tell the kids, so it’s always a surprise.
- Caroling – Usually we do this with our church, but on occasion we will just walk the neighborhood with neighbors and carol.
- Christmas Parade – the first Saturday in December is our town’s Christmas parade. I put it on the calendar in my Christmas planning time so it isn’t double booked and we walk downtown and enjoy the parade.
- Christmas Play – Our community theatre has a family friendly play each December that we like to support when the schedule allows. Knowing this ahead of time, it usually gets slotted into our family calendar when I plan in November and is a fun family outing.
- Shepherd’s Meal – I first learned of this from Sally Clarkson and think its genius. Christmas Eve we just have a snack dinner (cheese, humus, bread, fruit, sliced deli meats, etc.) No cooking because there are 1,000 other things to do. It’s simple enough an older child can help put together. As you eat, you can remember the shepherds who would have eaten a similar meal on the hillside the night Jesus was born.
- Christmas Nativity – I reference my Willow Tree nativity and one tweak on it is to have the “Cherish” figurine (a pregnant woman holding her belly) stand as Mary for Advent. Christmas evening when I’m laying out the Santa gifts, I swap “Cherish” for the Willow Tree Mary who is holding baby Jesus in her arms. It’s very subtle but it delights the kids with a bit of extra whimsy come Christmas.
Be encouraged. Traditions build over time. Don’t overload the schedule, these are the traditions we PICK from the larger list that our family continues to enjoy selections from over the years. We never, ever accomplish them all. This is just how we’ve developed a system that helps us maintain them and most of our sanity through the annual busy holiday season. Peace over pace, people! Chant at will.
