Merry Christmas EVE! Can you believe it’s here?!
My family has always done a bunch of different Christmas traditions because my mom absolutely loves traditions. I love our Christmas traditions, too, because they’ve stayed constant throughout our numerous moves (Atlanta, Orlando, Raleigh) and different stages of life.
I thought it’d be fun (maybe just for my mom) to share some of them here. When I go home, I love looking through boxes of old photos and reminiscing, so this’ll be like a little trip down memory lane.
Decorating Christmas Cookies
Each year, for as long as I can remember, we’ve made a bunch of cookies (always buckeyes, toffee bars, and sugar cookies– sometimes also lemon bars and cranberry bliss bars) to deliver to friends, neighbors, and all of the kids I babysit. I love baking all of the treats, but there’s something extra fun about decorating all of the fun stocking, gingerbread man, angel, and star-shaped cookies.
Don’t worry, we waited to decorate our faces until after we decorated the cookies. I think. 
In high school, I’d invite a few friends over for a cookie decorating night. Other times, it’s been just my younger brother, older sister, and me. We also sometimes recruit my parents and grandparents to help, like last year.
Reading the Nativity Story
Growing up, my family lived across the street from my cousins’ family, so our families always celebrated Christmas together. When we were really little, my cousins, siblings, and I put on a Christmas pageant for our parents and neighbors and acted out the Christmas story every year. We designed our costumes ourselves– hard to believe, right? 😉
Since we’re not nearly cute enough to pull that off these days, we stick to having someone read the Christmas story from the book of Luke before we dig into our presents.
Christmas Caroling
Each year, we’d pick a night in the week leading up to Christmas to visit some of our favorite neighbors and sing Christmas carols on their doorstep while carrying our DIY lanterns. Fortunately for our neighbors since 4/5 of my family can’t sing (absolutely including myself), that tradition has faded in the past few years but it’s a fun memory.
Puzzles and Board Games
My grandparents visit for Christmas every year, and my grandpa loves puzzles. He’ll bring a different puzzle each year and my brother and I will work on it with him throughout the week. We’ll also play lots of card games and board games like Mexican Train Dominos or Taboo.
Family Christmas Newsletter and Photos
Each year, we take a family picture to mail to friends, along with an annual family newsletter that my mom typically writes. Last year, she outsourced the newsletter writing job to me, and this year, my sister wrote it. I dug up a few of the old family pictures because I think it’s fun to see how we’ve all changed!
Liv’s 2-year old Christmas
The year my sister had a green fungus on her nose. (Or the photo had a smudge on it.)
Liv’s 4-year old Christmas
I would totally wear shoes like my mom’s in this picture. I feel like shoes like this are totally back in style now!
Liv’s 8-year Old Christmas
Liv’s 10-year old Christmas
My mom reassures me that I “never had an awkward stage” but I have a lot of photographic evidence that tells a different story. My hair was out of control for a few years.
Liv’s 15-year old Christmas
I conveniently couldn’t seem to locate Christmas photos from my middle school braces days, so we’ll skip ahead to this picture from my freshman year of high school.
Liv’s 16-year old Christmas
Liv’s 17-year old Christmas
Oh, the matching.
Liv’s 18-year old Christmas
The year I succeeded in convincing my family that we didn’t need to match again for any picture ever.
Liv’s 19-year Old Christmas (last year)
There are lots of other family Christmas traditions we do, like watching It’s a Wonderful Life, attending our church’s Christmas Eve service and decorating the tree while watching Elf or Home Alone. I also love watching some of the sappy Hallmark holiday movies.
Thanks for taking a little walk down memory lane with me. I hope you have a merry, merry Christmas!
So tell me…
What Christmas traditions do you love? Are you a “traditions person”?
What are your plans for Christmas this year?
Games is definitely one thing my family loves during the holidays – I have fond memories of playing them with my Grandma!
So fun! Merry Christmas, Janelle!
Haha my mom also claims I didn’t have an awkward phase, but it definitely happened around age 10 or 11…
We always do plenty of cookie-baking and try to manage a Christmas card photo, too. We love looking at the cards and letters that we receive from other families together. One of my favorite traditions with my grandma is the “pickle prize”, where my cousins and I have to search for a pickle ornament on her tree. When we find it, we get a gift. Technically, there should only be one pickle and one prize for whoever finds it, but we play with an ornament for each of us so everybody wins 🙂 Merry Christmas!
LOVE the pickle prize idea! That’s so fun! And I love that she includes an ornament for each of you so everyone wins 🙂 Merry Christmas to you, too, Ellen!
I agree with your Mom..you’re cute/beautiful in all your pics! We have a lot of similar traditions too: making cookies, puzzles, family photos, newsletters… so fun!
Thank you, Faith 🙂 Merry Christmas!
Thank you, Olivia, for the trip down memory lane! I will always treasure the memories that we have made together!
So will I. Love you, Mom!
My family has an annual Christmas Eve tradition where we go to church for the Christmas Eve service then come home and have coney dogs and open up one gift, which is always a new board game for us to play. We then play it and have a fun family night before the craziness of Christmas day takes off. Always a fun time! Wishing you a very merry Christmas Liv!
I love your Christmas Eve game tradition! So fun. Merry Christmas to you, too, Brie!
I love your Christmas cards! My family does the same thing too. We hang up all the old ones every year and make fun of each other for how we looked. One of our traditions is driving around to look at Christmas lights. Now that we live in FL, we make the car really cold so it “feels” like Christmas. Merry Christmas to you and your family 🙂
Hahaha I love that you make the car really cold when you look at Christmas lights. We usually have a pretty cold Christmas here in North Carolina, but today, it’s 80 degrees with 90% humidity! We may have to borrow your cold car trick 🙂
Ah your family is so cute!! I love your traditions. We always make christmas cookies too, and used to take a holiday photo every year, but the last two years we decided that my siblings and I were too old- ha! We’ve gone to my grandmas house for Christmas day every year and still do 🙂
Thanks, Kerri! Merry Christmas!
I am all about the board games this time of year! It’s a must for me, because I am pretty darn competitive. Merry Christmas Eve, Liv! Hope you have so much fun with your family. 🙂
My favorite part of this post was all of your family pictures. So much fu to watch you grow up!
Oh yes, I get way too competitive too haha. Merry Christmas, Julia! Hope you have a great time with your family!
The way your siblings dressed up for the Christmas story reminds me of how my siblings and I would dress up and play wedding =P Oh my Lord that was such a long time ago! My family doesn’t have too many traditions anymore, but who knows, maybe as we grow and have our own families, we’ll make some new ones.
We definitely dressed up to “play wedding,” too! My poor brother with two sisters haha.
And creating new traditions is so much fun- hope you get to creates lots with your own family one day 🙂
Isn’t family the best?! We had some fun Christmas traditions, but no set activities like that! I love the idea of it though and hope to do some with my family.
I’m baking cinnamon rolls from scratch tomorrow and I think that may start a new tradition!
I don’t know if you read the Pioneer Woman’s blog, but she makes dozens of pans of homemade cinnamon rolls each Christmas season to deliver to friends and neighbors, which I think is incredible! And I’m sure super yummy 🙂
Wow, we have a lot of the same things that we do… We don’t do the picture every year. Lord willing, we will do a picture tomorrow. 🙂 And the girls just finished a Thomas Kinkade puzzle… It’s BEAUTIFUL! 🙂 Oh yes, and we’ve done homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning for the past 7-8 years? 🙂 This year we read the whole Christmas story from Luke 1-2. Wow. I will never get over the amazingness of our Savior. It just baffles my mind and makes me SO happy.
Mmm, homemade cinnamon rolls are the BEST. We read from Luke this morning, too, and I absolutely agree.
Whaaa, what a tall family! Haha what is the age gap between you and your sister? My sister and I are only a year apart and our parents had us in matching clothes until we were like 10. I’m convinced it was the buy one, get one deals LOL. These photos are absolutely adorable!
My sister’s 22 and I’m 20, so we’re two years apart, almost exactly. Haha I LOVE looking back on the matching clothes pictures from when we were kids- so cute!
Ahhhh! Liv! I love this!! What a beautiful way to look back on some amazing traditions! Don’t you just love old photographs and the memories they provide? This is wonderful. I too love to watch Home Alone (watched it 3 times this year!) and other fun Christmas movies! I really didn’t bake/ decorate cookies this year… but it sure looks like a blast! That picture of you guys covered in frosting?? SO precious!
Wow, 3 times?! Somehow, I made it through this whole Christmas season without watching any of the Home Alone movies, which is a bummer since I love them! I guess they’ll be even better next year after going awhile without seeing them 🙂
We’re big on traditions too, especially during Christmas. We always do the exact same things on Christmas Eve and Christmas day haha. I love that you have ALL those family photos! So precious. Also I’ve “conveniently” gotten rid of any photographic evidence of my junior high days too 😉
What a beautiful way to look back on some amazing traditions. I love that you have ALL those family photos! So precious. My sister and I are only a year apart and our parents had us in matching clothes until we were like 15. We had some fun Christmas traditions, but no set activities like that! I love the idea of it though and hope to do some with my family.