We love our advent calendar tradition and we do it to our best ability each year but let me start off by saying that we rarely, if ever, do every single one of these activities. We get close but there is tweaking and switching of days and combining of days/activities and even the occasional that simply slip through the cracks. It’s all about making wonderful memories, not about perfection.
This is our simple advent calendar. Each envelope has a paper in it with an activity to do for that day. This allows us to switch out the paper each year with either a new activity, get rid of the activities we didn’t enjoy as much, or to simply move them around to the dates that work best for us that year. Here is the list of activities/traditions we do:
- sort through toys & clothes to donate
- write letters to Santa
- attend a Christmas party
- make a Christmas craft – we began a new tradition of doing Christmas tie dye this year with the intentions of making a large Christmas tie dye blanket with all the shirts after our kids all leave the house, leaving us empty nesters
- watch a movie w/new Christmas socks – usually new fuzzy socks bought at $1 store
- lesson/discussion on the symbolism of Christmas
- make Christmas cards for grandparents
- snuggle and read Christmas books – we’ve collected quite the collection of the years
- decorate the Christmas tree
- pajama party
- red, green & white dinner
- drive around and look at Christmas lights
- read & discuss “The Empty Box” – I cry EVERY year as when I read this. My mom gave it to us years ago along with an empty box that is apart of our Christmas decor, reminding us of the beautiful story throughout the whole season
- decorate sugar cookies- to be honest I rarely make homemade sugar cookies. I usually use store bought sugar cookie dough and while they are baking we do make homemade icing/frosting
- make gifts/cards for teachers
- family game night
- do an act of service
- goodies to public servicemen – we usually do chips and salsa and drop them off for the local fire station(s) and police station(s)
- host Annual Ugly Sweater Jubilee
- buy groceries to donate
- deliver treats to friends/neighbors
- go out to eat and leave a larger than normal tip
- s’mores by the fire
- watch a hallmark movie as a family
Our advent calendar hangs in our dining room so that each night we can look up what the next day’s activity will be. Many of these traditions have been going on for over 10 years now and I hope the kids will remember them as some of their fondest Christmas memories!
Merry Christmas
xo,
Jenny
Homestead Creations 