3 NEW Christmas Traditions you will LOVE

If you’re like most people, the holidays are a time of fun and a little anxiety. You are excited to celebrate with your family and friends, but you’re also wondering how to fit everything in your busy schedule and how to adequately prepare. These plans and anxieties can detract from the fun of the holiday, so maybe it’s time you added some creativity and fun alongside traditional customs. Having unique traditions gives you an opportunity to make great family memories and celebrate the spirit of togetherness.

Unique Christmas Traditions To Optimize Your Family Time

The first one can be a bit messy, but if you have children or pets, it can serve as a wonderful and beautiful reminder of the past in future years, and it can be a fun “rainy day” activity for the whole family. All you need is to buy an inexpensive bed sheet in a light color (that you would like to use as a tree skirt). The truly crafty may wish to add ruffles or other details before the tree skirt is “printed” with non-toxic paint on the hands of everyone in your family, including the paw prints of pets! Be sure to write the name in glitter glue next to every handprint and to put the year on the skirt. You can choose to do this every year, or to bring out the old one next year and reminisce about how much hands have grown, or to think about pets no longer with you.

If you have a lot of traditional Christmas recipes in your family, make a family Christmas recipe book can be a fun and useful gift to give. Collect recipes from aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers, and friends of the family, and type them up nicely, making multiple copies. You can even add a little story about each one, and the funnier, the better. What about the year that you left the turkey in the oven for too long and it was so dry you couldn’t eat it, or the year Grandma’s delicious red velvet cake was “stolen” by a family dog before you could eat it? Staple these together and add a nice cover – perhaps a large family picture! This will be a priceless keepsake for years to come.

Start a “caught in the act of kindness” competition on the first day of December. Give points for things like making someone else’s bed in the house, or folding a load of their laundry. Buy canned goods to give to local shelters, take time to visit an elderly member of your community, wash a neighbor’s car. Whoever has the most “points” on Christmas Day can pick an activity for the entire family to participate in – going to the movies, the local ice cream shoppe, whatever the winner desires!

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