Fridays Are For Family – Christmas Memories

16 Dec Fridays Are For Family – Christmas Memories

Christmas is just over a week away. I don’t know about you, but for me this time of year always brings back so many great childhood memories. I remember Christmas eve services and musicals at church. I remember trips across Tennessee in a stationwagon to spend Christmas at my grandparents’ house. I remember Christmas dinner with cousins I didn’t get to see at any other time of the year. I remember hunting with my father and a snowy scene with a little white house in the curve of a dirt road with a huge fir tree next to it decorated to look like a Christmas tree. I remember unwrapping a present, expecting to get some toy I really, really wanted and pulling out a pack of underwear or socks. (The toy was usually unwrapped next.) There were Christmas songs on the stereo and boiled custard in the refrigerator and the smell of pies and cakes in the air – so many wonderful memories. No wonder they call this “the most wonderful time of the year.”

Now that I have children of my own I’ve determined to do my best to make great Christmas memories for them too. So, I’ve been thinking over the past couple of days about some of the things that I want to make sure that I do this year to help create Christmas memories in their little minds, as well as some ideas for when they get a little older.

Here are some ideas I’ve come up with. Some are very simple, to be expected, kind of ideas. Others are things from my childhood that I want to pass on to my children.

Baking Christmas cookies together

Decorating the tree/house together

Listening to Christmas music together

Making a yearly family Christmas ornament together

Taking lots and lots of Christmas pictures/videos together

Acting out the Christmas story together

Going to see Christmas lights together

Reading the Christmas story together

Christmas breakfast – together

Making a gingerbread house together

Serving Christmas dinner at a homeless shelter together

Passing out Christmas gifts to family and friends together

Attending the church’s Christmas eve/day service together

Visiting a nursing home on Christmas eve and singing carols together

Providing Christmas for some needy family – together

Writing a yearly Christmas letter together

These are just a few ideas that I’ve been thinking about and writing down over the past couple of weeks. Do you have some great memory making Christmas ideas you’d like to share? What are some of your favorite Christmas memories?