With Christmas less than a week away, I am getting ready for our yearly traditions. Some of our traditions date back to when I was a kid, some of them even further than that. Some of them reflect my family’s heritage, some of them our beliefs. And some of them are just plain fun! So I thought I would share some of our traditions with you.
For as long as I can remember, someone in my family would make lefse for Christmas (pronounced lef-saw). Lefse is a soft Norwegian flatbread made from potatoes. My great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother all would make this flatbread and we would eat it with coffee or tea. Usually lefse is topped with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then rolled up and consumed. Yum!
Another tradition is serving snacks and finger foods on Christmas Eve. It was a tradition I brought from my family, and with Dan busy with candlelight services on Christmas Eve, it became the perfect and no-fuss way to celebrate Christmas Eve.
Also on Christmas Eve we give our children new pajamas and let them sleep under the Christmas tree. The pajama idea came from Dan’s side of the family and the sleeping under the tree was our own. The kids look forward to sleeping under the tree every year.
On Christmas morning, our kids are allowed to wake up whenever they want and open their stockings (so the parents can sleep in a little bit longer). Then we join together to read the Christmas story and take turns picking one gift from under the tree to open. Opening gifts can take over an hour and everyone enjoys the gifts, both giving and receiving.
Then we spend the rest of the day playing with new toys, playing games, reading, and eating my famous lasagna. We end Christmas with a birthday cake to remember it is Jesus’ day of birth we are celebrating.
So that’s my family’s traditions. How about yours? How does your family celebrate Christmas? Are there traditions you celebrate that have been passed down each generation? When you married, did each of you bring a tradition to your new family? What is your favorite tradition?
Morgan L. Busse 
I love the sleeping under the Christmas tree tradition! I’m logging that away for when we have kids. 😉
This is Daylen’s and my first year at our own home for Christmas, so we’re just starting to figure out what we want our traditions to be. But some traditions I enjoyed as a kid were:
1. Open one gift on Christmas eve (my Mom’s tradition because she’s German)
2. All us kids would sleep in the upstairs library which open over the two-story living-room. It was our job to keep the fire going all night under the stockings.
3. Have potato pancakes for breakfast (German recipe) with applesauce!
A tradition that Daylen and I both did growing up was to put together a Christmas puzzle during the days leading up to Christmas. This year, we did his family’s puzzle together. It was a lot of fun!
My went through the Christmas story sometimes. I’d love to make that a tradition with our kids someday.
Fun! I love the puzzle idea 🙂
Oh yeah, and then my other favorite tradition (which isn’t really Christmasy) is that the 26th is a reading day…all day long! I always try to go through one whole book that day.
Nice 🙂 I usually spend most of the day playing games or reading.
No real traditions here, I’m afraid. With 26 dogs, they are something of a tradition in themselves.
Hahaha! My family used to have eight dachshunds between all of us, so you can imagine what the holidays were like with all those wiener dogs 🙂
I can imagine…noisy!
We have one weiner dog among the group, and she seems like about three. She’s everywhere! And she’s always commenting on things.
Have a wonderful Christmas!
Ever since the children were born we started a lovely tradition of reading the Christmas story by candlelight on Christmas eve and then giving them a Christian present to take with them to bed. (Usually some kind of light or a story book).
On Christmas day a friend of ours started a new tradition a couple of years ago, we had decided not to have a tree because the boys wanted to build a manger and create a stable scene.
This they did and the friend who was visiting hid the ‘baby Jesus’. We spent a good deal of time and had a lot of fun ‘seeking Jesus’ on Christmas day. So, our new tradition is to hide the ‘baby Jesus’ and everyone seeks until He is found before we open the presents.
It’s fun to hear your memories of some of the traditions you have Morgan. It’s hard when all the kids leave the nest and we can’t spend time together as a family for the holidays so I’ve had to come up with new ones as well as continue the old tried and true. 1st, Christmas isn’t Christmas without focus on Crest on Christmas eve. I look forward to Candlelight service. I enjoy the yearly Christmas movies of White Christmas and It’s A Wonderful Life. Tonight Eric and I will go look a Christmas Lights and drink and hot cocoa!
One of my favorite traditions is simply going out and getting the Christmas tree. Not only was it something my family always had done, but it is a tradition shared with so many others. It’s one of those things that reaches long into the past and connects you with history. The decorations on it are traditions themselves: Ones inherited, others were gifts, some bought to remember various events.