10 Christmas Activities to Celebrate the Season
Christmas is coming around again! It is our family’s favorite time of year! Tree cutting, cookie making, movie watching, hot chocolate drinking and Christmas music listening are just a few of the Christmas activities we love most!
10 Christmas Activities to Celebrate the Season
1. Advent Calendar
Each and every year my husband buys our children a chocolate advent calendar (oh, and one for me too!). It’s something we look forward to each year.
This year we bought our grandson a Lego City Advent Calendar. Because what 6 year old boy wouldn’t want to open up a little toy each day?
2. Cookies
We have favorite cookies in our family that we make every year! Here are just a few of them:
3. Books
There are so many holiday books to love! From Frosty the Snowman to Twas the Night Before Christmas and so many more!
The 5 Days of Christmas Books with Activities includes 5 classic Christmas books to read and share with your family. Each one includes related activities like writing your own song, copywork, coloring, hot chocolate recipes and so much more!
The 25 Books of Christmas is a list of 25 wonderful holiday books, along with a fun idea for surprising and sharing them with your kids!
Here are 3 New Christmas Books to share with your kids this year!
1. The Berenstain Bears Go Christmas Caroling
In The Berenstain Bears Go Christmas Caroling, the whole Bear family is invited by the Bear Country Carolers for a round of Christmas Eve celebrations … and your whole family is invited to sing along!
A follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Fiona the Hippo picture book comes A Very Fiona Christmas!
It’s Fiona the hippo’s very first Christmas, and the zoo is sparkling with holiday spirit. When the adorable little hippo asks her friends, “What’s Christmas?” they set out to show her all the wonders and excitement of the season. With each new experience Fiona lets out a snort, wiggles her ears, and asks, “Is THIS Christmas?”
Amidst the snow, twinkling lights, mistletoe, and stockings, Fiona ends up meeting a new friend at the zoo who helps her discover the true meaning of the holiday: Love. Snuggle up with your little ones and join Fiona and her adorable animal friends for a heartwarming holiday romp through the zoo.
The Christmas story you haven’t read: What happens after Santa Claus delivers all the Christmas presents to boys and girls around the world?
Is there a gift waiting for Santa at the North Pole? Cuddle up with your little ones and follow the journey through Santa’s Workshop in search of Santa’s Christmas present.
{Thanks to Zondervan for sharing these books with me (via free review copies) so that I can not only share them with you, but with my grandson too!}
4. Movies
I LOVE CHRISTMAS MOVIES! There, I said it. While I love Hallmark Movies, my family is not so fond of them. However they do love movies like Elf, Home Alone, A Christmas Carol, and The Santa Claus.
It seems as though every year more and more channels and streaming services are running holiday movie line-ups.
5. Ornaments
Every year for Christmas we buy our children a new ornament. When they were younger it was often a favorite character. As they get older it may be a favorite activity, sport they play, or something we think they will love. One year they each got hand carved wood ornaments from the place we always cut our tree down.
Another fun thing to do is make Christmas ornaments. We have done these as gifts for grandparents and coaches, as well as for residents in a nursing, or even just to have on our tree at home!
6. Crafts/Art
Winter Wonderland: Mixed Media Workshop
7. Gingerbread House Party
While I never find these houses to taste particularly good (even when we have made our own gingerbread for them), we do love getting together and building/decorating gingerbread houses!
I like to buy this Gingerbread Mini Village because then all the kids have a manageable sized house to create!
8. Tree Lighting or Lights Display Outing
Attending a Tree Lighting or heading out for a Christmas Lights Display outing are two Christmas activities that can get your family up and out enjoying the season, but don’t cost much money!
While I have never been to a local tree lighting ceremony, we watch the Rockefeller Christmas Lighting Special every year on tv.
We have friends that make light viewing an annual tradition. It can be so much fun to drive around and check out everyone’s lights! In our neck of the woods they put out a map of where you can find some of the best displays!
You can use this FREE Printable Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt too!
9. Donate
- Toy Drive – Lots of places have toy drives during the holiday season. Christmas can be a hard time for so many kids and donating toys is a great way to put a smile on another child’s face. Our kids will often save their money to buy a small toy to donate. Piggy banks are always a staple means of saving, but did you know you can find and compare savings accounts specifically geared towards children?
- Christmas Shoe Box Campaign – Every year in November there is a campaign called Operation Christmas Child where you can fill shoe boxes full of small toys, hygiene items, art supplies etc for kids in three different age ranges. This is something my oldest looked forward to every year when she was younger.
- Mitten Tree – Our local libraries often have a “Mitten Tree” where people place hats and mittens on it for those in the community in need.
- Local Food Shelf – Foodlink is a large food donation site near us and they have many locations around the country. Often local churches have food pantries or even soup kitchens, the Salvation Army or Good Will. For 10 years we organized a Neighborhood Food Drive in which we collected items to donate to Foodlink. Now we take our kids (and even participate with our local homeschool group and 4H group) to help in the warehouse at Foodlink sorting donated food.
10. Attend a Christmas Show like A Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker
If you can’t afford a full scale production, consider attending a local school or dance troupe performance.
Or you can even make a special event of watching one of these at home!
11. Visit a Nursing Home and Sing Christmas Carols
Ok, ok, so I couldn’t stop at 10! Visiting a nursing home to carol is one of my favorite Christmas activities for a group. For years we did it with my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop and now we are doing it with our 4H group! You can even make ornaments or decorate cards ahead of time to hand out to the residents.
More Christmas Inspiration
Looking for more Christmas Traditions?
Looking for gifts?
I have TONS of gift ideas for you! Everything from games to art, Harry Potter, Battery Free, Stocking Stuffers, and more!
You can see all the gift lists here ==>> GIFT IDEAS GALORE <<==
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