Holiday Traditions - Albuquerque, NM

Ever since I was little my mom would pick each of my siblings & me a christmas angel off the tree in wal mart or the fire station to buy toys for. It helped to teach us christmas isnt just what we get but what we give. I have contunied that tradition with my daughter it makes her feel special to get to "help santa". Also we decorate gingerbread houses toghter. I like the kits you can buy at the stores have everything you need to make a great house.

We also make decorating the house & tree a family event. Everyone helps while drinking hot chocolate & having carols in the back ground.

I love everyone's ideas! I would also suggest the APS Festival of Lights parade and the Santa's World at Firebird Raceway both are awesome, we have gone for the last three years and both are a blast.

We love to go to Zoolights as a family. We also bundle up for neighborhood walks to see all the Xmas lights.

We bake Christmas cookies. I let them pour all the ingredients in (including cracking the eggs). I then have them pick out several cookies to decorate on their own. I set out ramikins of frosting,all different colored sprinkles, and the zoo pals knives, and they decorate away. It's messy, but they absolutely love it! When my son was not quite two, he just put giant blobs of frosting on his cookies. I then freeze all the cookies, and pull them out on the nights there is a special Christmas show on tv(Rudolph, Frosty, etc.) We sit down as a family and watch the show and everyone gets to pick out two cookies to eat. We also pick a night the week of Christmas of Christmas to drive around nd look at Christmas lights. They love it because they get to wear their pj's! We also buy an ornament each year for each child. The oldest two (5 & 3) come with me and I let them pick out what they want. It has been great to see what they pick and they get to hang these on the tree. (This was a tradition that my mom started when I was young. I still have all my ornaments and hang them on the tree every year. It is fun to see what was popular each year) I have also collected Christmas books for each child over the years. Each night, starting Dec. 1 we read a Christmas book before bed. I have not done this, but might this year, some people make a birthday cake and sing Happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas, as a reminder of what we are truly celebrating. I hope this gives you some ideas. Merry Christmas

Every year we go up north and cut our tree down. Christmas eve everyone gets to open one present, its always a freshly washed pair of Christmas PJs. The kids know every year that is what it is and every year they are still excited to see what pjs they got :) Then we sit around the tree with all the lights off in the house, except the Christmas lights and drink apple cider. We also love to drive around looking at all the lights. Every year we go to the same beautifully decorated house and walk around, Santa even visits every Sat. I hope you find a wonderful tradition to start to share with your family.

Barbra
Hi! We have a number of traditions. one of our kids favorites is singing Christmas songs around the Advent wreathe. We also go out as a family and cut our tree. We take it home and each child has their own ornaments that they place on the tree. For Christmas they receive another ornament to take to there own home when they grow up. After we eat and trim the tree. We turn off the lights and enjoy the tree while we listen to a special CD about the Christmas story. We have listened to it since my oldest was a baby and she say it is not Christmas without it. We bake cookies and are only allowed to have a few that night with egg nog.
We don't make Santa the focus but Jesus birth and the giving to others. Each year we rotate who gets to top the tree and always take pictures in front of the tree in our Christmas best. We have a Christmas book on what other traditions are around the country and have a musical book to sing along with. We always watch "White Christmas" and have a family feast. We have never had extended family near by so we made our family the most important at Christmas.

I could go on but these are a few ideas to grow into if nothing else.
C. B

Hi B.,
Our little one is two and we started going to the Polar Express in Williams Arizona last year. We went again this year and she LOVED it! We plan to go every year. The package is great...you get the train ride, a room with two queen beds, breakfast, and dinner. You may be able to find a Polar Express closer to you. I found one in Northern Nevada as well, however I don't mind the 3 1/2 hour drive for a little tradition.

http://www.classbrain.com/artmovies/publish/polar_express...

we use www.thetrain.com

I also plan to hit as many local Holiday light events as I can. She is so excited about it and I want her to see everything she can.

Be sure to share with us what your tradition is.

Happy Holidays!
C.

hi B.,
when i was younger my dad was in the military and he would pick an airman he worked with to come over for dinner on christmas and thanksgiving. he knew so many that could not go home for the holidays and had no family around so they came to our house for a home cooked meal. this year we are calling the chaplin over at luke air force base in order to help us find someone to come to dinner.

we have christmas on christmas eve. a week before we make cookies and walk to friends houses to deliver them and usually end up having cocoa or something. on christmas day we volunteer at the homeless shelter. then go to the do pund and take all the animals a treat and spend some time petting them and stuff. then go home in the evening and open presents. this way everyone has done something good and can see how lucky they are when they come home and open presents.

We get each of our kids a special tree ornament (either made or bought) and that way, when they are adults, they'll have 18 ornaments of their own - for keepsakes or for their own trees.

Also, we just started this one:
We make a scrapbook page 12 x 12 with photos of ourselves from the year - and the send it as a Christmas present to each grandparent. Especially nice for out-of-town relatives. But, what we did the first year - is include it in a 12 x 12 frame (try crafts stores and Kmart) and we included a scrapbook album so that they can take the prior years' page and put it in the album, and put the new page in the frame. Over time, they'll have a whole album of memories!

Happy Holidays!
-C.

I do the same as someone else on here. I do the collecting of ornaments with the year, any ones I see with their names on them. That way when they are older and out on their own they have them and the memories of that holiday. Each year they get so excited to see the ones they got as a baby and each additional year. I still have ones my Grandma gave me as a little girl as she always put a new ornament on our gifts. We also make sure we do the Christmas Lights drive through our local neighborhood.

Hi, my mom used to do this with me and my siblings, and now I do it with my 2 girls. I buy them Christmas ornaments each year that represent whatever they were into that year. I put their name and year on it. If we traveled anywhere that year, I bought an ornament from that place, and put their name & year on it. When we moved out, my mom gave us all of our ornaments. I have a lot of fun memories because of all the ornaments. My family also sits down together on Christmas Eve and write a letter to Jesus. We talk about the year...what we are thankful for, any trials we had, and how he got us thru it. You could ask your son what he is thankful and write it down for him. Save them in a book. My dad read all the letters on Christmas morning. It was a very special time.

When I was a kid, my Mom went to town and got a bunch of felt. She bought some decorations (sequins) and we set aside one day where we "made" our Christmas socks (stocking). My parents socks are red with a green cuff and their name (Mom; Dad) in green. The kids socks are all white with different color accent. Mine is burgundy, my little brother's is light blue and my little sister's is yellow. My Dad used an old stocking we had for a template. Using pinking shears, he cut out all the socks and the bottom of the cuffs. Mom sewed them all together along with a loop and we glued on our names (Daddy had cut them out of felt in the color of our cuff) and we got to glue on felt shapes and sequins.

While this isn't something I would think you'd do yearly, it's really kinda cool to take out your sock and remember that day. And no one I know has a sock just like mine! My friends thought they were kinda cool. Now that I've got kids, I'm thinking of doing this with them.

When we break out with the Christmas decorations, my oldest and my husband spend SO much time trying to figure out the perfect place and order for the socks.

Also, we make cookies to leave out. We don't talk about Santa much as I want my kids to concentrate on the true meaning of Christmas - but we bake cookies each year.

I had a favorite decoration when I was a kid and my mother has given it to me. It's a statue - about 6 or 8 inches high and it's Santa bowing at the manger in prayer. This is the first year that it's mine. So, we got it out and talked about it - what it means and why Santa is there. Now we are all looking for the best place to set this so it is focal.

One last thing we do is we all "help" put up our Christmas lights. We all discuss where they should go. (They usually end up exactly the same as last year, but the kids haven't figured that out yet!!) Then when it's dark, we all put on our jackets and go stand as close to the street as we can so we can get the "full effect" of our lights. The kids LOVE it!

Those are some of what we do. It's not super easy to start your own traditions, and sometimes it's just trial and error. Pick something and try it. That's about it!

Good luck!

Barbra,
We goes as a fmaily to the montains to cut our christmas tree and play in the snow if there is any. Or the other thing we do is drive around Christmas eve and look at the lights

We always let the kids open one gift on Christmas Eve. We bake cookies and leave a plate out for Santa. We also stop and get yummy cinnamon rolls from a local truck stop, Johnson's corner, and have those for breakfast every year. A little something else I have started doing, which I guess is becoming a tradition is we go and buy new Christmas PJ's for them to wear on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

Holidays are so fun! My daughter (3 in February) is big into being momma's helper - she loves to "bake" and she is so great helping me mix the batters and doughs for our holiday treats. This is a very fond childhood memory of mine with my gramma and mother which makes it more fun to share with my gittle lirl!!
The other thing that we are continuing as a tradition this year - is taking my daughter out driving to see Christmas lights! She really has fun looking for them, and then squeals with glee when she "finds" a snowman or a reindeer! She loves the lights and we love seeing the effort put forth in neighborhoods to share the Christmas spirit. What fun to look forward to as a family to see the area we live in. :)
Cheers!!!

We open one gift every Xmas eve. The kids sleep in the lounge to try and "catch" Santa, and wake up to their stockings at the end of their sleeping bag.
We'll also go every year and watch the Temple Xmas lights being lit.
We also cut our tree down the day after Thanksgiving every year and decorate it the next SundaY

The best one I can think of is teaching your children to give to others. Try sending some of your homemade cookies (even if they are cut and bake Pillsbury cookies) to the soldiers overseas or to a local homeless shelter. Your daughter may be a little young for these ideas but keep a scrapbook and build on the ideas. They will love it.

When my son (now 18!) came home from kindergarten with a tree for Theanksgiving, we started an anual tradition. His was a small branch in a plaster of paris base, with leaves glued on and on each was written things he was thankful for. Now, each year we choose a branch from a tree in our yard. We make an event of cutting out leaves and gluing on floral wire. I use 3-5 to decorate each place setting, and drop a few extras decoratively around the table. We set a few nice glasses out with fancy pens, and everyone writes what they are thankful for, and wires it to the 'tree'. When you are finished, you are left with a beautiful custom centerpiece.
We like to leave the tree on the table until Yule, when we put it in the Yule fire, sending our thanks again as we look over the year that is passng, and our prayers for the comming year.

Hi B.,

In my family we let the kids open up only one gift on Christmas Eve. It is always new jammies. We adults get new ones too. Then we put on our jammies and watch some of those old fashioned Christmas movies. You know "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." The old ones from the 50's. Another tradition is that we buy each of our kids an ornament that shows something they did or liked in the last year. We get it personalized with their name and the year.

Good luck finding traditions that you love!
C.

We don't have anything real huge that we do but here's a few ideas. We pick out a new ornament for the tree each year... also decorate the tree together. We usually pick out a night to drive around and look at all the beautiful Christmas displays. Also, my hubby and I have Grandma or someone come to babysit so we can go Christmas shopping together (which is so much easier and more fun without kids!) Oh, and if you don't already, attending mass together as a family on Christmas is fun too! Merry Christmas! :]

One of the years we had the children make up a rap song and dance to a holiday song...We(Moms)wrote a little something special about each of our nieces and nephews...This year I'm in charge of the prayer and the children are going to write a poem. Works good with older children...future plan. Merry Christmas!!

My husband and I take our daughters out driving around to look at Christmas lights. We especially enjoy doing this as a way to calm things down on Christmas Eve. I wrote an article about it that you can read here if you are interested: http://www.helium.com/tm/720698/meaningful-family-traditi...

We always trim the tree together and everyone gets to place their favorite ornaments on the tree. We also bake cookies and put them into containers and bring them to local businesses we patronize through the year - like the bank and the post office.

I also want to start going to Pueblo West's fesitval of lights parade every year, too.

Have you seen Seven Falls in the Springs? They also have an annual tree lighting.