Family Christmas traditions are the parts of December everyone looks forward to all year: cookie decorating, light displays, matching pajamas, the movie you can all quote by heart. And the best ones are easy enough to keep doing.
I’m a mom of two and a former director-level product manager, and I used to build systems that kept working long after a product launch. A good tradition is the family version of that: set it up once, and it keeps running every year without anyone wondering what’s going on.
When I first started building traditions for our own family, I had no idea where to begin, and I wanted ones that were easy to do. So I built the resource I wish I’d had. Here are 21 ideas, sorted into four groups: toddlers, older kids, Christmas Eve, and a few newer ideas to try. At the end, I’ll walk you through how I start a new one so it survives past New Year’s.
Family Christmas Traditions to Start This Year
Christmas Traditions for Toddlers and Young Kids
This is the stage I’m in right now, and it is magical. With kids ages 2 to 6, keep it short, keep it low-stakes, and let them make a mess.
- Cookie decorating. Set up a station ahead of time: pre-baked cookies, a few bowls of frosting, and more sprinkles than seems reasonable. Toddlers don’t want to bake. They want to decorate one cookie, eat two, and be done in eleven minutes. Ours happens on Christmas Eve at my mom’s, and the kids love to decorate with their Mimi.
- A book countdown to Christmas. Wrap twenty-four books (thrift-store finds are perfect) and let them open one each night to read before bed. It doubles as your December bedtime plan, so you have one fewer thing to decide at 8 pm.
- Letters to Santa. Have them write or dictate a letter early in the month. For the pre-writing crowd, they can draw it or narrate while you play scribe. Bonus: it’s the closest thing you’ll get to a gift list straight from the source.
- Christmas lights, by car or on foot. The easy version is a slow drive past the houses in your neighborhood that go all out. Or, find a local display you can walk through. We go to one at a nearby zoo. We make a night of it: arrive when it opens, walk through, and stop for dinner on the way home.
- A homemade ornament, one per kid per year. Make it out of salt dough, a handprint, or a photo in a popsicle-stick frame, and write the year on the back. Over time, you end up with a box of them to pull out every December.
- A local holiday event. Pick one or two that are easy to get to, like a tree lighting, a library storytime, or a free downtown stroll.
Christmas Traditions for Older Kids and Teens
Once kids are past the Santa stage, the traditions that last are the ones they help run or get to do on their own. For my sister and me, it was getting up together at 4 am, opening our stockings, and then sleeping in the living room until our parents got up. These traditions give older kids and teens that same kind of ownership.
- Stockings before the grown-ups are up. Let siblings open their stockings together first thing, so the morning starts with them. Agree ahead of time on the earliest acceptable hour to wake you up.
- Family game night. Older kids can finally play the games you want. Make it a standing December date, same night each week, snacks required, winner picks next week’s game.
- A Christmas morning breakfast they help make. Cinnamon rolls, a breakfast casserole you assemble the night before, whatever your people love. Older kids can own one dish, which buys you ten quiet minutes with your coffee.
- Addressing the holiday cards together. Hand off the stamps and the return-address labels. Teens can run it start to finish with a playlist on.
- An act of kindness day. Pick one: a toy drive, a shift at a food pantry, cards for a nursing home. At this age, they can choose the cause themselves and feel why it matters.
Christmas Eve Traditions
Christmas Eve carries a specific kind of pressure: anticipation peaks, and bedtime becomes a negotiation. A couple of set traditions give the night a shape, so you aren’t improvising while everyone vibrates. Our Christmas Eve happens at Mimi and Grampy’s house, with my sister (the kids’ Zia, Italian for aunt) there too.
- A Christmas Eve dinner that means something. My husband is Nicaraguan and doesn’t live near his family, so my mom makes him a Nicaraguan Christmas dinner. If someone at your table is far from their family for the holidays, a home-cooked meal is a tradition you can give them.
- The same movie, every year. Pick one film and make it the Christmas Eve movie. Kids like knowing exactly what tonight looks like.
- Christmas Eve pajamas. Open new pajamas on Christmas Eve, wear them for the movie, and keep them on for morning photos. At our house, the kids match on Christmas Eve, and we all do on Christmas Day.
- A read-aloud before bed. One story on the couch before they head up, the same one or a short rotation. It helps everyone wind down after a very loud day.
- A decorated kitchen to wake up to. Once we’re home and the kids are asleep, I decorate our kitchen. I do it the night before every holiday. In the morning, we all go downstairs together, and the awe on their faces always brings a smile to ours.
New Christmas Traditions to Start This Year
If the lists above already look like your house, here are a few new ideas to try.
- A Christmas Eve box. One box per kid, opened after dinner: pajamas, a book, a treat, maybe an ornament.
- The four-gift rule. Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. It settles a lot of gift decisions before you start shopping.
- A reverse advent box. Every day in December until your drop-off date, each kid adds one non-perishable item to a bin, and then you donate the box together.
- A year-in-review over cocoa. On a quiet night, go around and each name a favorite thing from the year and one thing you’re looking forward to. Write the answers in the same notebook every December, and starting in year two, read last year’s page first.
- A screen-free December night. Block one weeknight for a puzzle, a game, or gingerbread, with phones in a basket. It needs almost no prep, and nobody has to leave the house.
How to Start a New Family Tradition That Actually Sticks
Picking a new tradition is easy. Most traditions don’t fail because they were bad ideas. They fail because they stayed ideas. This is the system I use for anything I want to repeat.
Pick one. Choose one new tradition for the year. Trying to do all the things will only result in tears (from everyone).
Write it down. Put it where your family’s plans already live (the shared calendar, the fridge, your planner). A tradition that exists only in your head is a task you’ll forget, then feel bad about forgetting.
Give it a date and a trigger. A vague “sometime in December” gives your brain nothing to hook onto, so pin it to a specific slot: “the first Sunday of December, right after dinner”. Attach the new thing to something you already do, and it stops depending on you remembering in the moment.
Keep it small the first year. Make it easy enough that you’ll want to do it again, and add to it later.
Retire what stops working. Kids age out of things and schedules change, so if one that used to be the highlight now starts a fight, you’re allowed to let it go without guilt. Swap in one that fits the people you have now.
Why Are Family Traditions Important?
Think back to your own childhood Christmases. Odds are, you remember fewer gifts than the things your family did every single year. Kids hold on to what repeats: it tells them what to expect and makes your family feel like theirs. And for the person running December, a tradition means one more piece of the month is already decided.
Making Traditions Your Own
The goal is a few things your family does on purpose, year after year. They can be cheap and imperfect and still work. Start with one, and keep whatever earns its place.
If you’d like more of December planned for you, The Simplified Holiday Toolkit™ includes a short email every Sunday until Christmas that tells you what to handle that week, plus pre-filled planning pages.
It’s included in The Simplified Membership™, so the months after the holidays also come with a planning page. Grab The Simplified Membership™ and let this be the year the mental load gets a little lighter.
Want this list handy in December? Pin one of these to your Christmas board.
What Are Your Family’s Christmas Traditions?
Now I want to hear yours. What’s your family’s favorite tradition, the one everyone counts down to? Drop it in the comments. I’m always looking for the next one to steal.
Leave a Reply