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Need ideas for Christmas traditions for kids who've outgrown Elf/Santa


creekmom
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My youngest is 10 and has been so sad since finding out Santa wasn't real. I think the hardest part for her is that her older siblings got to enjoy the magic of Christmas longer bc she was the youngest, but now that she knows, the "magic" is gone. We are still going to give Santa gifts and fill stockings, but she is still sad things "won't ever be the same".

So, I've been trying to think of some other fun traditions for our kids. I thought a secret santa might be fun, and someone mentioned the "Christmas Game". Do any of you have fun tradition type ideas for older kids?

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When I was about that age - the "I can't really even pretend Santa is real" age - my mom and I started a tradition of watching It's a White Christmas and wrapping presents together on Christmas Eve.  Something about staying up late(ish) and getting special time with my mom really helped me get over that "hump".  We still do it, and I'm 34  :001_smile:

 

Beyond that, I don't remember anything super special we did, but I do feel like mom made an effort to get me more involved in the planning of the traditions we already had: chatting about the menus for Christmas Eve and Day, a more active role in decorating, etc.

 

Good luck!

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I stopped believing in santa at a super young age. Like 3 I think? Christmas was still very obviously the best day ever!!! I can totally see ten year olds not being as jazzed, I just think there isn't much to be done. The new, more grown up family traditions like above sound likea super idea! Plus, yanno, not to be crass but.... presents! Cookies! Etc. I vote make it special in some small, new, ways but otherwise just let the happiness of the day speak for itself.

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We have a special day putting up the tree, Christmas carols etc. I stay out of it and the kids do it.

 

Ds8 also likes us all to sleep around the tree one night, with the lights on (once he's asleep we turn them off because insomniacs and lights are a bad, bad idea). We all haul our mattresses into the hallway/dining area nearest the tree. It's a small house so this is rather challenging!

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We never did Santa in my family, but my fond memories/traditions from childhood are:

 

Watching "Miracle on 34th St." on Thanksgiving day

Decorating our family's wooden train* with candy, toys, bows etc. with my sister. We also took over setting up the Christmas village buildings and spent hours together on this.

Opening pajamas on Christmas Eve.

Watching "White Christmas" with cocoa, cookies, and popcorn.

Setting up the nativity set and waiting until Christmas morning to add baby Jesus.

Sledding the day after Christmas with 3 other families and having potluck leftovers for dinner after.

Driving around town to look at lights with a Thermos of hot chocolate.

 

*We just bought a remote-controlled LEGO train that my DS6 is going to help build/decorate for our new family tradition.

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When my son was about 10, things changed in many ways for us, and we needed to have a new tradition.  One thing we did was to read aloud "A Christmas Carol."  

 

My brilliant friend did something really beautiful with her kids, though.  She turned them into The Givers.  She gave them each $20 to find a way to give to someone in need.  And she never ever asked how they had done so...it was to learn the satisfaction of giving in secret.  They adored it.  In a way, it is also a rite of passage; instead of being deprived of Santa, they are being promoted "to" Santa.  

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We read Christmas stories all season.

We attend a matinee performance of The Nutcracker followed by ice skating.

We attend Christmas Eve church service followed by hot cocoa and a drive to see pretty houses with lights.

We choose a few houses in our own neighborhood that we think are superbly decorated (the voting is sometimes contentious :)), and we leave a little anonymous note thanking them for the visual treat--sometimes we tuck the note in a little mug with those hot cocoa packets or candy canes.

Edited by Hyacinth
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My kids haven't believed in Santa since my son was 4.  Christmas is still fun and can be magical if we don't get all crazed with trying to do too many things. (Two years ago I was in charge of our church Christmas party and ruined Christmas for everyone with my busyness.  Never again!)

 

One of the things I've found about traditions is that they have to develop organically.  For example, I loved the tradition of the Advent wreath as a kid, but it never stuck for us.  Then I tried a Jesse tree.  That didn't stick either.   But we discovered that I read The Story of Holly and Ivy every year, no matter what.  So I guess that is a tradition for us. 

 

Mostly for us, though, traditions come and go.  My husband used to read A Christmas Carol aloud every year.  Not sure when that stopped.  We have a few movies we'd watch every year, but suddenly last year we discovered that everyone finds A Christmas Story to be unpleasant and unfunny.   Poof!  That tradition is gone.  But something else may replace it. 

 

:grouphug:

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A pricy thing that I probably don't do this year is the Lego Advent calendar. We rotated days to open and put together. It's always fun to see what lego thinks is festive. Nothing has topped the years of naked Santa, but I wonder why lego always puts in a criminal of some kind. The person in our family who will miss this tradition is 21.

 

We always make a ginger bread house together. We watched holiday movies and read holiday stories. I make extra treats. Everything is kicked off with our local holiday parade the day after Thanksgiving. This is the last year dd will be in it with her dance studio--they wear Nutcracker costumes and dance at a few points during the parade.

 

Pick a couple special things that you do only this time of year and make them a highlight in your house.

 

An evening drive through the local Festival of Lights.

An ice skating trip

A nice afternoon looking at a local museum or parks holiday display (anyone setting up model trains in your area)

Making special cookies together

Making ornaments together

Learning a craft together that can be used to make presents for others

Go through your paper and find listings of local events and pick out a few.

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We never did Santa, but Christmas was still a wonderful, "magical" time for us.
We had many little traditions -
Christmas light scavenger hunt
making Christmas candies to deliver to friends/teachers

decorating the house together

making cinnamon rolls and homemade hot chocolate for Christmas morning. 
picking out gifts for The Angel Tree
Watching "White Christmas", "The Preacher's Wife", or "Elf"
Christmas Eve appetizers to eat while watching the movies

We always opened our stockings on Christmas Eve, so that was exciting for us. But, if you don't want to do that, some families do a special movie/pjs gift on Christmas Eve. You could have a special movie that you always watch as a family on Christmas Eve as well. 

I have a friend who takes her family to the store every year to pick out a new ornament. That same friend puts her kids to bed on Christmas Eve (or any other evening), then wakes them up later that night for the "Polar Express" ride (They give the kids a thermos of hot chocolate, "train" tickets, then take them to look at Christmas lights.)

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We swap names for stockings and once my kids got old enough to do so, they immediately asked to be in on the swapping. Ds has been obsessively asking whose stocking he'll have this year. We usually decide at Thanksgiving and he's crazy excited to shop for the stocking.

 

We also do Christmas Eve performances. Everyone is supposed to sing or play or act or read something they prepared. It's fun.

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I like the draw names to fill stockings idea! This year my girls decided they want to fill my stocking for me because I always fill  everyone's stocking including my own and they realized it probably isn't as fun for me to fill my own stocking.

 

My kids are 13, 17, 17,  and 19. Traditions do change and evolve over the years but here are a few we still do:

 

--Fancy candlelight dinner on Christmas Eve - fancy dishes, sparkling cider in goblets, etc. It makes it special

 

--Santa's Sleigh-  It's like a clue game-  We have a wooden Santa Sleigh- probably 8"x12"- I fill it with a small wrapped present for each family member. The presents are numbered and the children have to guess what each gift is and who it is for. I have a master answer key and they come with their list and make their guess. I can only tell what number of answers they got correct. (6 people in our family = 12 answers).  I have to double wrap/tape the presents very well because they get handled a lot. We open the presents on Christmas Eve and the winner with the most correct answers wins a candy bar. When they were younger I would start the game several weeks before Christmas. This year we won't start the game until the oldest comes home from college -so they will have less time than usual.

 

--Advent Calendar in Envelopes- I only done this a couple of years but my 13yo is already asking for it this year. I get regular plain envelopes and let the kids decorate them with Christmas stamps, etc. and number them for each day of December. I fill each envelope with small/flat candy- just enough for each family member to have one or a few.I string ribbon along the wall in the hallway and attach the envelopes with binder clips. Each day they open an envelope for their daily treat.

 

-- This year my youngest (13yo) has decided that she wants the kids to put on a performance for Mom and Dad on Christmas Eve. She wants each kids to play an instrument or sing.

 

 

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Some things we did/still do with older kids:

 

Drive around to look at lights, and then come home to eat cookies and drink hot chocolate or hot spiced cider.

Watch It's a Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve.

Decorate the tree together.

Buy Christmas gifts for the less fortunate.

 

We have also invited people who can't go home (international students) over for Thanksgiving dinner, but you could do it at Christmas as well.

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We don't do santa at all, but we have plenty of traditions that make christmas special for us

 

Gingerbread houses. we just buy the kits from the store but the kids LOVE them. 

 

Christmas eve day is baking day, we all make different things. Right now with little kids they can only help, but when I was a kid each child was responsible for one or two deserts. All being in the kitchen baking together is a huge memory for us. 

 

Paper chain decorations are loved by our little kids, but may be a bit childish for your older ones now. 

 

Special foods. Christmas morning there was a box of individual sodas (we NEVER had soda as kids)  and some sugary cereal (we also never had that) waiting for us. Worked for our parents too, since they could just feel us cereal for christmas breakfast and not have to fuss over a special breakfast.

 

Every child picks out a special ornament that belongs to them (these will go with the kids when they move out)  and those live on strings around the house.

 

Christmas lights, we have a competition in our city and surrounding suburbs that many people have entered for years, some even decades. We go onto the site and divide the catagory winners/finalists by north, south, east and west, and do 4 trips over december to see the lights, often up to an hour away. There's even some great synchonised lights with music, and some walk-through places with activities. We try to also include a church that is 90 minutes away but does an interactive 'bethlehem' with petting zoo and stuff. We have carols on in the car and we always try to include the streets/neighbourhoods where multiple people have done lights so we can walk around. There's fireworks in the city center the week before christmas, along with a parade. On christmas eve we go to a huge christmas street party, there's usually a church chior, almost every house is decorated, the police close the street for christmas eve night because it's become so popular. I live in Australia, so it's hot, so spending time walking in the cool evening air is perfect. I don't know how much of this happens in your area, but I'm sure if you really looked around, in the paper and at local churches and websites, you'd probably find a bunch of events going on. We make an intentional effort to go to them, and that's always been very special for us. 

 

We're working on incoporating some sort of advent calender and some sort of jesse tree style thing, but we haven't found what works for us yet. 

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We never did the elf/Santa thing. When I divorced, I started some new traditions with my kids. DD was 8; DS was 18. We would go by Starbucks on Christmas Eve, get an overpriced hot drink, then go see Christmas lights. An old neighborhood in my town has luminaries up and down the sidewalks and it's just beautiful. 

 

Another thing DD and I do is go to the Festival of Trees in our town, look at trees, get an overpriced gingerbread man, and buy a small ornament in the gift shop.

 

I'm not always able to pull it off due to prices, but I try to take DD to some sort of Christmas event--concert, ballet, something special. 

 

The day after Thanksgiving is when the tree goes up and it's followed by White Christmas. 

 

 

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Our kids exchanged names for Christmas gifts after Thanksgiving dinner. We usually put up the tree the next day, the Christmas CDs would come out, and that evening we would go shopping for ornaments. Every year, each child got to choose an ornament, the idea being that when they grew up and moved away, they would take their ornaments for the start of their own collection. These weren't Hallmark ornaments with dates or frames for their photos. They were whatever the child chose. Sometimes it reflected their current interests, and sometimes they were just pretty ornaments.

 

Usually the evening of the last day of school before Christmas (Daddy is a teacher, so we followed the public school calendar), we would drive around and look at Christmas lights. Then we would come home and the kids would make "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers. And that would also be the night they would sleep around the Christmas tree. Mom and Dad joined them when they were little, but as they got older, we opted for our cozy bed while they goofed off in the living room.

 

When the girls were taking ballet, they performed in the Nutcracker every year. My two artists made Christmas cards every year for each member of the family. As they got older, the designs became very elaborate -- real works of art. Of course, there was cookie making, too. One year, for some reason, I just didn't get much baking done, so I was fired from that job. After that, the kids each had their specialties that they would make, from decorated sugar cookies to mint fudge and everything in between. One year, we had a party for the neighborhood children with games, crafts, the Christmas story with Betty Lukens felts, and snacks. Several years, we went caroling. These traditions and activities are the things they remember, rather than the gifts they received.

Edited by mamajudy
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My brilliant friend did something really beautiful with her kids, though.  She turned them into The Givers.  She gave them each $20 to find a way to give to someone in need.  And she never ever asked how they had done so...it was to learn the satisfaction of giving in secret.  They adored it.  In a way, it is also a rite of passage; instead of being deprived of Santa, they are being promoted "to" Santa.  

 

This truly is a wonderful thing to do.  If I could go back in time ....

 

Regards,

Kareni

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