Make Family Holiday Memories
Guide to Creating Traditions Your Family and Friends Will Remember
Oct 31, 2009
At holiday time we all find comfort in traditions, unpacking much-loved ornaments and hanging them on the tree and baking favorite family recipes.
New traditions, however, can bring even more meaning to our holiday celebrations. Here are a few to consider adding this year.
Make Time for Others
- Postpone your own Thanksgiving dinner one day, and instead, ask your family to sever dinner at a local shelter, donate hours and/or food to a local food bank; send a check to a local charity; or adopt a needy family for holiday gift giving.
- Organize a neighborhood caroling group and sing through the halls of a local retirement center; read holiday notes to your kids each evening, and tell them about the friends or family they may not know well..
- Visit a grandparent, elderly friend or neighbor for an evening or invite them to your home. Sit down in the living room, and have them tell you (and the kids) what the holidays were like when they were young.
- Set up board games and cards at different stations around the house. Families can come and go through the evening. Keep the snacks simple: popcorn and peanuts.
Share the Workload
- Partner with friends or family members to simply holiday preparations. Make a double or triple batch or soup or cookies. Organize a baby-sitting exchange so buy neighbors have time to shop or bake. To speed the work of housecleaning, gather three or four friends and go from house to house until each is holiday ready.
- Gather a group of friends who want to learn to knit. Everyone knits a square and then one person sews them together to make a patchwork throw. Donate to a local cancer ward.
Rediscover Old Favorites.
- Rent one of the classic holiday movies – such as Come to the Stable, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, White Christmas, or The Grinch Who Stole Christmas – and watch it on Thanksgiving Day. A classic DVD and book make a treat gift for a couple celebrating their first holiday season together.
Take Time for Joy
- Sing holiday tunes in the car, wrap little presents in big boxes, kiss under the mistletoe. This year, forego a fancy New Year’s party for fondue and a fire at home. Bang pots and pans out the back door at midnight.
Give IOUs for your Talents instead of Wrapped Gifts
- The fit of time is perfect for everyone on your gift list. How abut a homemade dessert delivered the first weekend of each month, six evenings of baby-sitting, cooking brunch for 10 weekly bouquets from your garden in season, or a Saturday of home improvement help or advice?
The copyright of the article Make Family Holiday Memories in Holiday Entertaining is owned by Stefanie Gabrych Fraser. Permission to republish Make Family Holiday Memories in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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