Have You Created Your Family Friendly Holiday Traditions?

Whoo Hoo! The Holidays are officially here! And while, yes, I may have a hugely dysfunctional family at times, never in the world would I want to trade them for anything. I love my family dysfunction. It makes us, US! I also love the fact that now that I have my own little family, we can create our own traditions, in addition to the ones we already have with our extended families.

This year, I want to create holiday traditions that we set in stone now, so that my child(ren) will look forward to them each year, no matter how old they get.

One of my favorite childhood traditions is every year on Christmas Eve, my mom bakes a huge batch of sugar cookies that my siblings and I decorate for Santa, and now with our own children as well.  I look forward to this tradition more than any of the others. I want to create something that wonderful for my own family. I am just not sure what.  In fact, I want to create something for every holiday!


For Thanksgiving,  maybe we all make a family pie together! Not just any old Pumpkin pie, something crazy, with crazy shaped crusts. Thank you Pinterest for having one thousand bazillion pie making ideas.

Too Ambitious?
Maybe if we start this tradition now, then maybe in 20 years we can pull off kissing swans! 

Christmas is the tradition I am stuck on. I want it to be wonderful, and something we look forward to as a family. I'm thinking it's something we do as a family on Christmas Day, mid-afternoon after the presents are opened and we have all had naps.

I read somewhere the idea to hold one small Christmas gift back to give after dinner or before bed on Christmas night. I like that idea, but I want something else, something GRAND! (FYI: Wikipedia has a bunch of Christmas tradition ideas.)

For New Years, I want to have a dinner where we talk about our great achievements over the past year, our biggest lessons learned, and then talk about what our goals/resolutions for the new year are.  My hope is that in sharing all of this as a family we will encourage each other to meet our goals through the year.

Easter is about faith and family, I love this day. We go to church, have brunch, the egg hunt and the rest of the day to lounge around as a family. Still, as far as a family tradition goes, I'm thinking the night before we will decorate Easter eggs as a family.  Just us.

Oh, yes, bring on the holidays and family dysfunction!

What about you? What are your favorite traditions?