15 May 2025 · Maia Hillsborrow
Marketing Director · Mother of five
Family Christmas Traditions to Start This Year
We have five children in this house, two of whom arrived with a family and traditions of their own. I've spent a good many Decembers working out which of the things we do are holding the season together and which ones I'm doing because I put them on a list in 2019.
What I've learned is that a tradition is a promise you're making to repeat something for the next fifteen years. That's a longer commitment than it sounds when you're looking at a craft idea in November.
What makes one last
Almost all the ones that survive share the same four properties, and none of the four is about how good the idea is. It has to be cheap, because anything expensive becomes a thing you skip in a hard year. It has to be quick, because a tradition that takes an afternoon won't happen in the December when somebody has the flu. It has to work across a wide age range, since our children currently span fourteen years and anything pitched at one of them excludes four. And it has to survive being done badly, because the year you do it exhausted and half-heartedly is the year it either becomes real or dies. The traditions that failed in our house all failed for one of those reasons. The elaborate advent activity calendar lasted two Decembers. The gingerbread house lasted one.
For the run-up
The weeks before are where most of the actual pleasure is, and where the cheapest traditions live.
- A single decoration bought or made each year, dated on the back. Fifteen years later the tree tells you the whole family history, and it costs almost nothing.
- One evening of driving or walking to look at lights, in pajamas, with something warm. This one works at every age from nine months to fourteen years, which is rare.
- Writing cards together at the table, with the smallest children scribbling on the ones going to grandparents.
- A single baking afternoon. Ilizabeth is twelve and bakes better than I do, and this is now entirely hers. She plans it, she runs it, and the little ones are her staff. It started as something I did with her when she was four.
- Choosing and delivering something for somebody else, which is the one I'd put ahead of all the others.
- A December book that only comes out in December, which small children take extremely seriously.
For the day
The day itself needs fewer traditions than people think, and the ones that work are usually about order.
Ours are simple: the children come in when the light on the landing is on and not before, new pajamas the night before, one particular breakfast, and a walk after lunch whatever the weather is doing in whichever country we're in. Four things, unchanged in six years.
The walk is the one I'd recommend to anybody. It breaks the day in half, it moves everybody out of a hot room, and it's the point at which the day stops escalating. As a physiotherapist I'd put it this way: several hours of sitting, eating and excitement with no movement in between is a poor plan for adults and a worse one for children.
More family occasions
The quieter ones
Some of the best traditions are barely activities at all, and these are the ones that hold up when a year is difficult.
- A photograph in the same spot every year, which takes ninety seconds and becomes the most valuable thing you own.
- One sentence each about the year, written down and kept. We do this over the last meal and it takes ten minutes.
- A candle or a place set for somebody who isn't there. Families that have lost somebody usually need this more than they need another activity.
- A phone call to the same person at the same time every year, which for expatriate families is often the entire emotional weight of the day.
- Ending the evening the same way, with the same music or the same story, so that the day has a closing bracket and not merely a stop.
Making it yours
This is the part that counts most in a blended or a mixed family, and it's the part the greeting-card version of Christmas has nothing to say about.
When two households combine, everybody arrives with a set of things they assume are simply how Christmas is done, and the assumptions are invisible until they collide. Ours collided over when presents are opened, which sounds trivial and wasn't, because for one of my children it was the last thing that still worked the way it had always worked.
What worked for us was naming it explicitly. Each side keeps two things that are non-negotiable and says out loud why they count. Everything else is up for discussion, and the family invents one or two things that belong to nobody's history and are new to all of us. A child who has watched his old tradition survive intact is a child who will join in with the new ones.
The same applies to living in a country that isn't the one you're from. We're American and Australian and we live in Bangkok, and Christmas here looks nothing like the one I grew up with. Trying to reproduce a Californian December in the tropics made everybody miserable for two years. Keeping three things from home and building the rest around where we live works. I think. Ask me again in December.
Keep the list short
Three or four traditions is a season. Twelve is a project, and a project is something you can fail at.
Every year I look at what we did and retire anything that has become an obligation. Nobody has ever noticed. What the children remember isn't the number of things we did. It's that the ones we did happened again, and again, and were the same.
The evidence
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.