Traditions!! - Menifee,CA

We do 1 gift on Christmas Eve (jammies) & I let the kids order as many things as they want off of the Chinese menu for dinner that night as well. It's not terribly exciting, but it works for us & is something very different from anything I had growing up! ;)

We dress up in our pajamas (decent ones of course) and go to Starbucks and get hot chocolate and drive around and look at Christmas lights. We have so many people wanting to do this with us we usually go twice now.

We do the Christmas pickle! Get a pickle ornament, hide it in the tree, let the kids find it! In our family, whoever finds it gets an extra gift...

We always go see the Christmas Lights. There's usually one neighborhood known for going all out. We stop for hotchocolate and put Christmas music on the car radio.
We open one gift on Christmas eve - new pjs
We have Christmas eve with ectended family, and Christmas together at home.
One tradition I got from my M. is putting the unwrapped toys back under the tree for a few days after Christmas.
Banana Nut bread is a Christmas morning tradition from my gramma.
The youngest girl always puts the topper on the tree
With my M. we always made sugar cookies and I ditched that expensive, messy tradition. I let my kids make Cupcakes instead.

We spend our Christmas in Florida with my family, so many of "our" traditions really come from my M. and dad (our childhood).
1. Christmas Eve is very "formal"- 5:00 Mass with a fancy dinner complete with china and crystal afterwards. Everyone has to "stay dressed" until after dessert is served.
2. My parents save all of their Christmas cards to open on Christmas Eve. We save ours too and bring them with us. We open them up with Christmas music playing and a nice bottle of wine. This year my sister and I are both pregnant, so maybe some hot chocolate too!
3. Christmas morning is all about presents and a pancake breakfast- cooked by my bleary-eyed parents after all of the gifts are opened.
4. Christmas afternoon, all of the girls go see a movie while the guys stay home and put together toys and play with the kids!

Making a "Yule Log" cake.

Getting new pajamas

Getting a new photo ornament for the tree of the kids. I use www.kodakgallery.com Each year I get a photo ornament of the kids. 1 for each of them. Then when they are grown up with their own tree, I will give them their photo ornaments. My kids, LOVE seeing their photo ornaments each year. And they decorate the tree with it. Been doing these ornaments for them each year, since they were born.

Oh yah: we also have Elf on a Shelf
And Advent Calendar
And the Christmas Pickle ornament

We always made pizza or ordered out pizza on Christmas Eve until I started dating my hubby (his family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve).

Every year each child gets a new Christmas ornament. We take a picture with an ornament every year at Christmas time (doesn't have to be the new ornament they got).

Every year we go to the local tree farm and cut down our tree and have hot cocoa while we decorate it.

I think maybe we should institute Elf on a Shelf or something like the Christmas Pickle that Kate L's family does!

On Thanksgiving - we always eat kringles (sent in from some other state...lol) before the food is even done!!!

As a kid, and with my own child, we always shopped for (or made) 2 new ornaments a year, with dates (or we added the date on the bottom, etc). We did 2 so that when dd moves out (just as when I did), one of the ornaments from each year goes with me, the other stayed at home with Moms giant tree. That way we have a starter set for our own Holiday tree!

Eventually I got the other ornament set as well when my M. died 4 years ago, but she had 18-20 ornaments carefully wrapped in tissue, in a fancy little treasure looking box she had bought at some point and fancied up (she was crafty but had bought them when we were adults so they were all the same, had each of us 4 kids names on them..and even had some she had done with the grandkids..so a few smaller boxes).

I have the set for my daughter too (she is 17) so she will have her "starter set" whenever the time comes that she sets out on her own and makes that first tree.

I remember my first tree with my now-hubby. We bought a huge fat real tree (I always had a real tree up till then, and his memory was a real tree on his "happy" years), and had to go buy lights and a star for the top and ornaments. He loved how almost reverent I was openeing my little shoebox (thats what it was at the time) of ornaments. Many of my little years were school made ones, or the ceramic homemade ones we did with my Godmother who lived next door...the pipecleaner and button elves with the teeniest bells on their caps, etc. He never had consistent tradition or events with his crazy fighting divorced parents (mine were divorced too but my M. loved Christmas and made it very special , even poor as we were!), so this was a big deal to him to see!

Good luck finding what works for your family!!

LOL!

My daughter had a similar project and I had to think of at least 7 things.

Here are the ones we did/do:

-We pick out a live tree at a tree farm with my parents.
-The girls pick out a new ornament every year for the tree. (It's fun to see what they are into, year to year. My youngest picked out a my little pony ornament this year)
-We put out a nativity scene every year on our coffee table - the girls fight over who gets to put Santa out.
-We get out our pickle ornament that we leave out for Santa to hide in the tree Christmas Eve and the child who finds it Christmas morning gets the extra present left behind
-We bake cut out cookies and decorate them
-We go to my parents house Christmas day and before we even celebrate Christmas there we celebrate my dads birthday with a cake & birthday presents.

We haven't really came up with our own traditions either.

We do go look at Christmas Lights and we sing songs. That's just about it. We have to come up with something for us too. It's hard huh. lol

We usually set up out tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. The kids help and we listen to Christmas music. Sometime during December, we make gingerbread houses, go see Christmas lights, and take a picture with Santa. Each of the kids receives a Christmas ornament in their stocking to take with them when they have their own place. We also make handmade ornaments for our family members. On Christmas morning, we open the presents from Santa then all the others. For breakfast, we have breakfast casserole (eggs, bread, cheese, bacon, etc). I hope this helps!