Ideas on How to Enrich Your Holidays
Are you looking for ways to add more meaning and continuity to your holidays? Holidays are a great way to make memories and to teach your kids important values, like how to give to individuals less fortunate and more. All while you spend quality time with your children as you continue your family traditions for the holidays.
But, if you feel like your family doesn’t have many family traditions for the Holidays, why not invent some innovative and fun traditions? Below are some quick ideas on how you can invent new family traditions or add new ones to your list of traditions. By doing this you can add continuity and more meaning to the holidays. You can start now as December rolls by.
Make a Memory Book. Despite the new advances of photo blogging and facebook, the qualities books and albums have are irreplaceable. While preparing for the big holiday, write down where you live, how the tree looked like, and who visited. Ask guests to make comments in your book. Take note of special gifts your family received or gave. Insert pictures of your guests, family, and your decorations ,like pictures of the tree in this book. Keep this book on a bookshelf or somewhere special.
Give to the Less Fortunate. Holidays are a good way to build awareness and generosity in young kids. Many malls and department stores have “Giving” of “Angel” trees where you can buy a toy or donate a boxed toy for a child, who’s less fortunate. Take your child with you to select a toy to donate to another child. Show them the importance of giving and being generous to others.
Pick a Day for Tree Shopping. Choose a weekend to buy a tree– it may be Thanksgiving weekend or the first of December, but whatever day you choose make it a holiday tradition to purchase your tree on the same day every year.
Use Special Ornaments. Decorate your tree with a handful of meaningful ornaments. Make sure to use them on your tree each year to add continuity to the holidays.
Distributing and Opening Gifts. Make it a tradition to distribute gifts in a unique way. It maybe having someone dress as Santa and handing out the gifts or someone putting on a reindeer headband when opening their gift. You can also make opening gifts a tradition by setting a specific time for when children can open their gifts. It may be Christmas Evening or on Christmas morning.
Food Traditions. Choose to add things your family enjoys eating and you like making to your traditional holiday menu. Make a traditional dinner when family comes over for the holidays. You can also serve a traditional beverages such as cider, egg nog, and cocoa for special evenings or mornings. You can add baking treats such as sugar cookies and fruit cake as fun activities to do with the kids during the Christmas holidays.
Music. Make a holiday CD that you can play in the background when guest come over. Use your old time favorite songs on the CD and add some new Christmas songs for your kids.
