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Home > Top Christmas traditions (free or low cost)

Top Christmas traditions (free or low cost)

November 26th, 2007 at 05:25 pm

1. Decorate the tree...this always has to start with laying out the lights to make sure they work..the replacing of lights is a royal pia, but seeing kids faces when a strand lights up is so worth it. Then Daddy is in charge of putting lights on, while Mommy helps the kids find out what other decorations are available (some kitchen towels, a few place mats, a bell, nothing much) and then the most important part of the tree...The kids take turns putting ornaments on (with Daddy assisting as needed, Mommy unwrapping) Of course the whole time Christmas music has to be on!

2. Bake sugar cookies Now if you have never tried this I want to warn you children make a royal flour mess, and yes the cookies taste more like flour! but it is fun, and they are cute, and they love eating what they made! (or other cookie)

3. Read the advent book The actual book is a bit expensive though wonderful, I often think of making one, to give as a gift, we have 5 years of tradition of using this exact book so I could never get rid of it. Each day in December has a separate page with a door cut out (like lift a flap books) and behind the door is a bit of the story of Jesus and a beautiful picture (the 'doors' are beautiful too). We start with page one on December 1st and then each night review the 'old' pages before reading the days page. We usually do it in a 'fill in the blank' way so that the kids help tell the story "The angel ------(Gabrial) came to tell ----(Mary) that she was going to----(have a baby)" and so on.

4. Drive through the neighborhood looking at lights. Nothing special, no drive far from home, we just take a detour down the side streets one night that we come home.

5. Christmas carols at church bake a batch of cookies and share while singing, The kids have a song they sing just kids, and lots more sung as a big group. All gathered around tables so not like a service, just cookies and fun.

6. Fill a Shoe box of toys Operation Christmas is a cute method of filling shoe boxes to send to poor countries to give to kids at Christmas time. We always do one per kid. I am sure many fill the box with 50 or more dollars of stuff, but we have always done them for less than 10..some toys we never used some crayons a few dollar store surprises and done, full box. There is a shipping fee of 7$. The kids actually usually contribute their Halloween money to the Dollar tree part.

7. Get a gift for an angel tree we did this when I was a kid and I liked it, I would love to get one per kid, but so far that is hard, these days the requests are for bikes, Ipods or some other toy I can't afford to get my own kids (gmas bought the bikes here) so we have to hunt around to find one that just says 'toys' and we usually aim to spend less than $20. Picking the gift out is great fun for the kids.

8. Making place mats every year we cut out last years Christmas cards glue them on construction paper and laminate to make place mats for some relative...the recipient varies, but the kids love cutting gluing and giving.

9. Write our own Christmas card we usually like to fill in the family about our kids, any family news and of course a picture. We print them ourselves so cheap paper and a bit of time is all it takes. Sure done perfect would be nice paper, but no one said we were perfect!

10. Make some kind of Christmas decorations some times we do paper chains (use glue and you can recycle them, use staples and you really aught to save them) Other years we do snowflakes, many times we design and print a magnet or window cling or stickers (papers received free from buying pictures..haven't done so in 2 years, and still have plenty of magnets to go for years!) One year we made ornaments out of cinnamon and applesauce, smells wonderful, but all my kids had rashes on their hands for a week!

There are many more things we do, but those are ten of the earliest done, making them fresh on my mind!

3 Responses to “Top Christmas traditions (free or low cost)”

  1. mom-from-missouri Says:
    1196099519

    We do the above, except don't do the placemat thing-but we do a make some of our own cards....
    Sometimes we cut our own Christmas trees for free--my parents have them growing rather quickly at their place, and we have 2 in the fence line that need to come out or they will tear up the fence. Thats a fun project to do after it has snowed--we pull the tree back to the house on a sled

  2. nanamom Says:
    1196130164

    I am so glad traditions live on in some families. I remember our traditions quite fondly.

  3. princessperky Says:
    1196181661

    That sounds neat, we don't have any decent Christmas trees around here, though my husband keeps wanting to cut down the scruffy pine out back..I told him it would look worse than a Charlie Brown tree! Not to mention our hill could use all the anti erosion roots it can get!

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