Daily Christmas Activities

This is one of our family's favorite traditions, but it has taken a few years of tweaking and evolving to get to what we do now. My suggestion, if you like this idea, is to start small and then add to it each year. Basically, what we do is each day during the month of December we have one family Christmas activity. Some are as simple as telling a Christmas joke or singing a song, but others require more time and preparation. To make it fit in, we print out a blank December calendar each year then write in programs, recitals, parties etc. and on those day we write in our simplest activities. On the days we have more time, we schedule ones that require more time. Sometimes we have a whole week of telling Christmas jokes or singing, and we are often trading them around as the month moves on, but we still make sure we do it just to keep the tradition up.

Last year our ward Christmas party was all about sharing traditions. I did a table display and made this layout and an explanation sheet hand-out to go with my odd collection of display items. (A laundry basket, a bunch of wadded up pieces of paper and a can of shaving cream need a bit of explanation especially amongst cute stuff like gingerbread houses, Santa, nutcracker and ornament collections don't you think?!?) Sorry for not providing a text version of the activity explanation, but I guess it didn't get transferred to the new computer so it was easier just for me to post a scan. I think you should be able to read it. (you will have to click to enlarge them though)
Each year we come across new activities that become possibilities and they get added to the master list (atm, I'm just writing them on the back of my layout). Ones that have been added for possibilities are: have a camp out around the Christmas tree, have a Jerusalem picnic, and since we have a little girly girl now we will be adding things like 'turn on Christmas music and dance' or 'have a Christmas parade' where we will wear Santa hats and march with instruments to a Christmas song. (okay, we're a little on the weird side, but we have fun!)

If you want explanations for other activities, let me know (I'll be posting our list of service ideas next week.) OR! if you do Christmas activities, please share, I'd love to expand my list!