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Looking for some ideas to help spice up your family's celebrations during the holiday season? Try some of these out!

Ideas for Creating New Traditions for the Holiday Season
Traditions are important for families because they provide opportunities to keep your family legacy going. From the simple to the silly to the sentimental, traditions can create meaningful memories. Don’t hesitate to try out some new traditions this holiday season and see what works and what doesn’t for your own family. You just may create a new tradition that will keep going for generations! If you are looking for some ideas in the search for new traditions, consider the following:

1) Try an annual extended-family get-together. Sometime during the holiday season gather the extended family together at someone’s home or restaurant and hang out with one another.

2) Make decorating your home for Christmas a family activity. Pick a day to decorate your home for Christmas. Then, rally the troops on that day and get everyone involved. Play some Christmas music, and have some fun food and drinks on hand. Make it festive!

3) Watch Christmas movies. Throughout the Christmas season, gather the kids together and enjoy your favorite Christmas movies. Two classic favorites: It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol.

4) Attend a Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve service. If your church doesn’t have special services, you can probably find one going on somewhere in your community. This is a great way to focus your family’s perspective on the true meaning of Thanksgiving and Christmas!

5) Start traditions with Christmas Eve/Christmas Day meals. For example, at the Burns’ home, it’s always Chinese food on Christmas Eve.

6) Letters to Jesus. Before opening your Christmas presents, write thank-you letters to Jesus. Collect them and make them available every Christmas. Keep adding new letters annually. Here’s one rule to make this tradition work well: family members can only read the thank-you letters they have written.

7) Live out an annual family version of The Twelve Days of Christmas. First identify a friend, relative or neighbor to receive all of the “gifts.” Then, create a unique gift for each day of the song (i.e., five golden rings could be five glazed donuts) and place the gifts on the recipient’s front porch.

8) Bake and decorate homemade Christmas cookies. Allow everyone in the family to participate if they want. Everyone should be able to request their favorite kind of cookie.

9) Sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas Day. After all, it is Jesus’ birthday that we celebrate.

10) Read the Christmas story from Luke 2. Whether you open your gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, try having someone from your family read the Christmas story out loud before opening gifts.

11) Go to the movies on Christmas Day. Gather the family and head off to the local movie theater. You’ll probably get good seats!

12) Drive around looking at Christmas lights. Sometime during the Christmas season, load the family up in the car and drive around looking at Christmas lights. This is an activity you might want to combine with attending a Christmas Eve service.

13) Go Christmas caroling. Take a walk around your immediate neighborhood and stop at homes and sing Christmas carols.

14) Visit a Nursing Home. There are usually a lot of lonely people living in nursing homes – especially during the holiday season. Take your family to visit a nursing home – and spread the love of Jesus to sick and elderly people.

15) Help at a food bank or soup kitchen. Try spending Thanskgiving or Christmas day helping the needy at a local food bank or soup kitchen. You never know, your kids may never want to spend a Thanksgiving or Christmas day at home again!

16) Celebrate your family’s ethnic heritage(s). Sometime during the Christmas season, prepare a family meal(s) that celebrates your family’s ethnic heritage. This is a great way to connect with your family roots – especially if you don’t regularly focus on this throughout the year.

17) Secret Santa. As a family, select one person you know who is lonely, needy or just needs some extra encouragement. Purchase or create a special gift for this person. Then on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning, get the family up out of bed, bundle up, grab some cookies and hot cocoa, pile into the family car and drive the gift over to the person’s home. Sneak the gift onto the front porch and include an attached card that reads, “From your Secret Santa.”

18) Holiday memory journal or scrapbook. Purchase or make a holiday journal or scrapbook. Have everyone in the family contribute by recording memories of the holiday season. Keep adding to the journal/scrapbook annually. This provides a wonderful way to look back over Thanksgivings and Christmases gone by.

19) Ice skating on Christmas Eve – day. Many people get off from work early on Christmas Eve. Gather the family and head out to an ice rink or local (frozen!) pond for some time on the ice. It’s a great way to spend some family time and it keeps the kids active and helps them not to over-obsess on the presents under the tree back home.

20) Attend a local community Christmas event. This tradition can really take hold if the community holds the same event annually.

21) Try a New Year’s Eve event. Whether it is a neighborhood get-together, a party with friends and family or a special church event, ringing in the New Year together as a family can create great memories.

Click here to download these ideas (WORD / PDF).

Ideas for Helping Others at the Holiday Season
It’s recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, (Matt. 10:8) Jesus said, “Freely you have received; freely give.” Though our lives may not always be everything we hope them to be, for the vast majority of Americans, we lives that are richly blessed.  One of the ways we can demonstrate that we are grateful to God for his many blessings, is to help others. The holiday season is a great time for your family to get involved in helping to meet the needs of others in your community – showing them the light and love of Christ. Here are some ideas for reaching out and helping others during the holidays.

1. Donate your time helping out at a food kitchen or a food bank.

2. Visit someone who lives at a nursing home or who lives alone and is confined at home because of poor health.

3. Invite some neighbors who don’t have plans to join your family for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.

4. Buy some (or all) of the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner groceries for a needy family in your community.

5. Have your family go through their winter clothes and coats, pick out those that are old or are no longer wanted or needed – and give them to homeless people in your area – or take them to a local shelter.

6. Make some bag lunches and distribute them to homeless people in your area.

7.  Make more desserts than you need for your holiday meals. Give extras to neighbors or to a needy family in your area.

8. Find an elderly person in your area that could use some help at the grocery store. Better yet, invite them to your home for a special holiday meal.

9. Find a family in your area that could use some help to take care of fall yard clean-up, basic repair or weatherization around their home. Buy the needed materials and get to work!

10. Invite a neighbor’s family over for a simple, fun family game night.

Fun Holiday Quizzes
Thanksgiving Quiz
Turkey Trivia Quiz
The 12 "Duhs" of Christmas
Christmas Carol Trivia

Fun Family Christmas Activity
Family Grinch Night