Christmas Eve and Holiday Family Traditions

Christmas Eve is finally here and many of us have been getting things ready for the holiday for the past several weeks. My holiday preparations start immediately after Thanksgiving and for the most part are done a few days before Christmas.

I love the Christmas holiday so I’m always excited to plan out a dinner menu with family favorites, design a new holiday tablescape, decorate the inside and outside of my home, work on various holiday craft projects and more! As the holiday approaches I get more and more excited!

Today I wanted to talk about Christmas Eve traditions! Do you have any and what are they? How long have you been doing them?

When our daughter was little we started our family holiday traditions and now that we’re grandparents…they continue! On Christmas Eve my husband reads 2 Christmas books to the grandchildren which they enjoy. Every year on Christmas Eve we give them one small wrapped gift and 2 new Christmas Tree ornaments. I buy each of them 1 ornament that reminds me of something they like or did that past year and I make each of them a homemade ornament to go along with it. We sit down to watch the Night Before Christmas on DVD (TV) and snack on homemade cookies and hot cocoa. Right before they leave our home for the night we sprinkle homemade Reindeer Food out in the front yard for Santa’s reindeer. We send them home with a plate of homemade cookies to put out for Santa before they head to bed. Wow, that’s a lot!

Once everything is done I try to get into bed no later than 11 PM so that I have enough energy to attend sunrise Mass at church in the morning and get through the long Christmas day.

So let’s hear it! What kind of Christmas Eve traditions do you have? Did you have any as a child that you continue now as an adult? I would love to hear about them! Merry Christmas Eve to everyone!!!