There is only one week until Christmas; I am so excited! This is my absolute favorite time of year because I look forward to spending extra time with my family and friends and doing all our Christmas traditions! Today I thought it would be fun to give you an idea of what Christmas traditions my family has and what we do to prepare for the holiday season! I will be sharing 12 of our Christmas traditions below! Happy reading!
Decorating Christmas Sugar cookies
One weekend in the month of December my family spends a night making and decorating sugar cookies! My mom gets out all of our Christmas cookie cutters and we take turns rolling out the dough. This year we got creative and made some of our own cookies without the cutouts and they turned out so good! We are usually so excited to frost and decorate them, but by the time the cookies come out of the oven are excitement wears off and we end up frosting all the cookies the same color with a few sprinkles on them haha!
Listening to Christmas music and decorating with my family
Either the weekend before or after Thanksgiving, depending if we’re feeling up to it, we put up all of our Christmas decorations together! We all go down to our basement turn on Christmas music and help my dad carry up all the boxes. We have a crazy amount of Christmas decor so it usually takes us the entire weekend, but it’s so fun to do as a family and we look forward to it every year!
Going Downtown to Look at Lights and take Pictures
Every year, we plan a Friday or Saturday night that we can go downtown together. We listen to Christmas music driving there, we eat at the Calderone Club, ordering pizza and garlic bread every time, we listen to the singing bears that Grand Avenue Mall has set up, and then we walk around downtown looking at all the different lights and figurines they have set up for Christmas! Downtown Milwaukee has so many lights set up all over the city, it’s definitely something worth seeing!
Sledding or Tobogganing
I love getting on my snow pants, winter hat, gloves, and coat and piling into the car with all of our sleds to go sledding or tobogganing! Somehow whenever we all go sledding together, it always seems like someone ends up in tears or we have to leave earlier than planned because someone got hurt. The hills are usually a little too icy or a bit too crowded. It’s fun nonetheless, it’s just funny! I just wish there was some sort of conveyor belt that would take us back up the hill after we sled down! I can’t stand walking up the hill!
Ice Skating at Red Arrow Park
I love ice skating! I usually can’t skate for very long because my legs get so tired, but it’s still so much fun! I usually skate a few times around the rink and then I’m fine sitting and watching everyone else! I love going to Red Arrow Park downtown because there’s a cute Starbucks next to the ice rink and beautifully decorated Christmas trees. It’s a perfect spot to take pictures!
Gingerbread House Making Contest
This is a more recent tradition that we started two years ago! The first year we bought a Gingerbread house kit, but last year we decided it would be more fun to use Graham Crackers and our own candy to make the houses so they would be more original! It was so much fun, and we laugh about it because we only had one hot glue gun, so everyone had to wait their turn to glue their house together and put the candy on! We gave each person a two minute limit with the glue gun and then they would have to pass it along so everyone got a turn! It really made us plan ahead what we wanted to glue on because as soon as you got the hot glue gun it was go time! The houses ended up looking so good! And my sister and I’s won our family contest.
Driving down Candy Cane Lane
This is probably one of my favorite traditions and for those of you who may not know Candy Cane Lane is located in West Allis, WI and the whole neighborhood decorates the outside of their houses! The families that live here really go ALL out with their decorations. Lights are everywhere, blow up Snowmen and Santas are put in the front yard, Christmas music is playing, it’s so fun to drive through! At the entrance there are a few people collecting donations, a small donation is recommended and all of the money raised goes to the MACC fund (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer). It supports research for childhood cancers and blood diseases, such a great cause!
Finding houses that have Christmas Lights Displays
There are always a few houses in our city that put on a Christmas Lights Display where the lights on their house “dance” to the music of a specific radio station. Somehow my mom always knows which houses do this, and we make an effort to find a few of them near us! We sit in the car and watch the lights on the house dance along to the music of the station! It is honestly so cool!
Christmas Eve Church Service
Every Christmas Eve we go over to my Aunt’s house and go to the Christmas Eve church service! Our family goes to church the night before Christmas, so that we don’t have to rush in the morning to wake up, open presents, get ready, and be out the door by 9am. I love going to the Christmas Eve service because I love hearing the Christmas story and listening to the children sing and act out the story. They are so cute and it’s such a great reminder of what Christmas is really about!
Christmas Morning
On Christmas morning my siblings and I wake up early, just out of habit and excitement, and we go straight to my parents bedroom to wake them up. We bring our presents that we got for each other and my parents and open those gifts in my parent’s room. Then, my mom gets out the camera and we all go downstairs together to open our gifts from Santa and our parents. After that, my mom makes chocolate chip pancakes for us, we get dressed, and we go to my grandma’s house for more presents and lunch!! It’s the same exact routine every single year and we love it!
Watching a Christmas Movie
On Christmas day, after we come home from my grandma’s house we all get our pajamas on, my mom pops popcorn-adding extra butter of course, and we watch a Christmas movie. I think the last few years we have watched Four Christmases, which is one of my favorite Christmas movies! It is hilarious!
Family Skiing
We actually haven’t gone skiing in a few years, but we used to go every February. One of the years we went, somehow I forgot my coat at home and realized after we had gotten to the slopes. Thank goodness it ended up being pretty warm that day so I didn’t actually need it! Anyway, I love skiing and wish we had some better slopes in WI! Next year we are thinking of taking a family trip to Colorado to go skiing and I can’t wait!
I would love to know if any of your Christmas traditions are similar to mine or if you have different ones that you do every year! Let me know in the comments below!
I know there is only one week before Christmas, so if you are still looking for gifts to buy for anyone be sure to check out my Christmas Wishlist, I linked a ton of cool gift ideas for you to check out!
XO
Cassie
