Making Christmas traditions with your grandchildren

Christmas is the most special time of year to be a grandparent. It’s a wonderful time to create special family memories that can bond a family together and last a lifetime.

As a relatively new “nana” myself, with a toddler grandchild, I am eager to make the most of this grandest of all holidays for children. When our granddaughter grows up and reflects back on her childhood Christmas holidays with Nana and Papaw, I want those memories to not only bring a smile to her face but to also have played a role in molding her into a caring and compassionate adult who shares our faith.

With that in mind, I recently asked several grandmothers I know and trust about their Christmas traditions. This article will share the best of their traditions and add a few of my own. My hope is that these ideas will both inform and inspire you to make Christmas even more fun and meaningful for your family. After reading it, I hope some of you extra-wise grandmas out there will take time to tell us about your own Christmas traditions by adding a comment below.

Photos and ornaments

As the years pass by, few gifts are more treasured than good family photos, so it’s no surprise that photos are a part of many Christmas traditions. Look at how many Christmas cards and letters include family photos.

One good way to ensure the grandchildren remember you is to shoot an annual photo of you with your grandchild or grandchildren.

“I do a picture Christmas card with my granddaughter,” said Betty. “We have done it since her very first Christmas!”

If you want to use photos as part of a gift, there are plenty of options, from photo books to calendars to refrigerator magnets. One of the more special photo gifts that you can build a tradition around involves Christmas tree ornaments. I love the tradition many families have of purchasing or making a new ornament each Christmas that includes the grandchild’s photo and the year. As time passes, the ornaments become a way to remember the past and how much the child has grown.

Sandy, a friend in Alabama, said photos and ornaments both play a role in her family traditions.

“I usually try to get them (grandchildren) matching clothes and get a good family photo,” Sandy said. “Sometimes I take their photos from throughout the year and make ornaments with them.”

Whether store-bought or homemade, Christmas tree ornaments can become treasured keepsakes that help tell a family’s story. Donna, another grandmother friend, is continuing an ornament tradition her parents began.

“Every year around Thanksgiving time, we choose a new ornament for each person (in the family) for the tree,” Donna said. “We mark the date on the bottom as well as the name and write it on our ‘Partridge in a Pear Tree” journal so that everyone knows what ornament they had from the time they were born.”

In Donna’s family, once the children grow up, they take their childhood ornaments with them, so they can continue the tradition with their own families.

“I have ornaments on my tree that my mom and I made when I was 10 years old,” Donna said.

Speaking of ornaments, I cut out a felt Christmas tree this year and hung it on the wall in our breakfast room. It has felt ornaments that our granddaughter enjoys putting on the tree. While she will eventually outgrow it, we hope she will look forward to this tree each Christmas at least for a few years. I plan to take a photo of our granddaughter standing by the tree each year, to help chronicle her growth.

Adapting for larger families

With only two children and one grandchild, at least for now, family gatherings for Dave and me are manageable, but if you are part of a larger family, things can get more challenging around the holidays.

Phyllis, who lives in Tennessee and has all four of her and Glenn’s children and their nine grandchildren nearby, loves celebrating Christmas but has learned that with roughly 20 people in the family (and still growing), it takes more organization and planning.

“Instead of gifts, we do stations,” Phyllis said. Each family member is responsible for creating their activity station, such as a craft or game, charades, scavenger hunt; or make homemade pizzas or go to the movies.”

Here is the two-day schedule of Christmas activities for Phyllis and her large family:

It’s not Christmas without the food!

What kind of holiday would it be without yummy foods? Now there’s a tradition that is guaranteed to generate favorable family memories! Every family has their own food traditions. For our family, it’s baking fresh cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. We did this with our children and plan to continue it with the grands. The sweet aroma of the rolls greets family members as they come out of their bedrooms, and everyone knows that the Christmas celebration has begun!

For my friend Nita, it’s making gingerbread boy cookies, a Christmas tradition she began with her daughters and is now continuing with her granddaughter.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without cookies.

“My favorite (tradition) is making chocolate milk mix and decorating cookies,” said Gail. “We then sit together talking of God’s blessings from the year and enjoying the hot chocolate and cookies.”

In some families, the food tradition is a bit more sophisticated. For Dee, it revolves around fondue, a tradition that dates back more than three decades.

“On Christmas Eve, we have cheese fondue,” Dee said. “We have a special recipe for it, with small chunks of fresh French bread to dip. It’s so much fun! We now have four fondue pots since the family has grown.”

Some family food traditions adjust as the children or grandchildren grow older, as is the case with Carlene’s family gathering each Christmas in Texas.

“We have our traditional Los Patios Cheese Soup in bread bowls, and have added sliders for the son-in-laws,” Carlene said.

Movies, puzzles and family time

Lots of friends mentioned taking time to watch one or more holiday movies together. Others like to assemble puzzles together. To me, it’s not so much the movie or puzzle as it is about spending time together as a family. If part of your family’s Christmas tradition is watching movies together, which ones do you watch? I’d love to hear from you. Please respond by sending a comment at the end of this article.

Teaching values

One important role us grandparents can assume is making sure that Christmas for the grandchildren (and the adults too) isn’t just about who can get the most gifts. Christmas is a time to teach values, and especially the virtues of giving to others and remembering the less fortunate. Thankfully, lots of families are doing just that, as I found when I talked with friends in preparation for this article.

“I give my grands a bag to fill under the tree,” said Ena Carol. “They decide which gently used toys they want to share. ‘Santa’ then puts them on his sleigh and takes them to someone in need. On Christmas morning, ‘Santa’ leaves a bell and a note inside the empty bag. It teaches them to think of others.”

A tradition Dave and I believe teaches about giving and showing respect to others is to take turns opening gifts on Christmas. Rather than everyone making a mad dash to open their own gifts as fast as possible, we allow each person in the room to open only one present at a time and then watch as each other person opens their gift. This reinforces that Christmas is about valuing one another and sharing, not greed.

Another way to teach values is to invite someone outside the family to share Christmas with you, or at least the Christmas dinner. Lorin and Patsy say they do this, as well as leaving an empty place at the table to remember loved ones who have passed. When Dave and I worked at a university, we would look for students who lived too far away to travel home and invite them to join us for various holiday meals. You might also invite young married couples who have moved to your town from far away, widows and widowers, or really anyone without family nearby or who cannot travel to their families, for whatever reason. Besides being a heart-warming thing to do, it will teach good lessons to the children at the table.

Keeping Christ in Christmas

I love all aspects of Christmas, even the silly and secular ones, but for those of us who are Christians, let’s not forgot that the holiday is really about the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Among Christians, one of the most common traditions is reading the Bible story about the birth of Jesus, most often from Luke 2. We’ve done this in our family, although we also read the classic “Night Before Christmas” story too, mixing the secular and religious traditions.

Another tradition we followed with our children was taking them to some of the larger churches in town to see inspiring Christmas plays and musicals. Our church typically did not do special Christmas programs, so this became a tradition our family looked forward to each year.

Several grandmothers shared creative ways of keeping Christ in their Christmas celebrations, including involving the grandchildren in telling the story of Christ’s birth.

Gwen, a friend in Florida who has 16 grandchildren, shared her family’s tradition:

“We re-enact the birth of Christ every Christmas Eve. I have so many grandchildren that it is adorable. We have the stable keeper, the angel Gabriel, baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and we have little sheep and angels that run around because they’re so tiny they can’t be anything else.”

Jacki, another grandma with several grandchildren, takes a different twist:

“One of our Christmas traditions is that Howard (her husband) reads the Christmas story, and I have made costumes for the grandkids to dress up as Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. We have a little wooden cradle and the kids get to dress up and act out the Christmas story. Many years we had a little one to put in the manger. They (grands) take turns switching costumes and reading out of the Bible. It is always very special.”

Make your Christmas special

At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark ad, there really is something magical about Christmas. As grandparents, we are in a unique position to create and nurture positive traditions that are not only fun and memorable but teach good values and are faith-affirming. I hope you will take time to add comments below.  I will look forward to learning about your family’s Christmas traditions, even the fun and silly ones, and I’m sure others who read this post will be eager to read your comments as well. Don’t forget to include comments about your favorite movies to watch as a family at Christmas.

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Merry Christmas to all!