Every family creates and maintains their own Christmas Eve traditions. If your family hasn’t already settled on your Christmas Eve observances, or is looking for some new ones, here are some favorites compiled by IMom.
Happy Hanukkah. Here are some suggestions for celebrating Hanukkah with children of different ages (under 5, 5 and up, and tweens).
For families that celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, Parents magazine has some suggestions for melding the holidays through food:
This idea for a fun game comes from Deborah Skolnik, who was senior editor at Parenting and is currently editorial director of NYMetroParents.
When I married my husband, I was introduced to my new favorite game, Hide the Pickle. That sounds wrong.
Let me explain: My in-laws hang a pickle ornament on their Christmas tree each year, and whoever finds it gets a lovely coin.
The thinking is that a tiny green pickle in a big green tree is tough to spot. And it is—for amateurs. But I’m Jewish: I’ve spent my entire life staring at pickles. (I’m pretty sure I had a pickle crib mobile.) For a while, I was killing it. As the others squinted and scrutinized, I’d give the tree a quick once-over and locate the camouflaged Kirby—stat. Year after year, I’d get the coin, while my brothers- and sisters-in-law would politely hide their sour (or half-sour) feelings at my winning streak. Eventually I bowed out, feeling the fight wasn’t fair.
Now that we all have kids, we’re the spectators. It’s my daughters’ turn to try to out-pickle their cousins, and they usually don’t. Our family today is an even greater mix of beliefs and backgrounds, so in a sweet way, Hide the Pickle is a tribute to our nation’s great melting pot. Just fill mine with matzo ball soup.
Just as Sophie and Tommy celebrate Christmas in different ways, so do all families. Over the next few months I will be posting ideas for family observances and celebrations. Today’s suggestion comes from the Parent Map website. Please share your family traditions too.
“One of our favorite holiday traditions is actually one that we saw being practiced in a friend’s home while we were visiting for the holidays. Each Christmas our friend’s mother writes down the big family moments that have happened throughout the year and reads them aloud after the family has finished opening their gifts. Now as adults, our friend and his siblings can go back and read these annual thoughtful journal entries and reminisce over all of the great family moments that they may not have remembered right away. And since the journal begins from the time that they were infants, they have plenty of treasured moments to recall each year!”
Two of my preferred sources for blank journals are Paper Source and, for a choice of journals from all over the world, Novica.
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