You Do What at Christmas?

Whether your family winter holidays are crammed with traditions or you’re looking for more, these personal rituals that our readers shared will warm your heart. 

Slowing Down

When I noticed my kids quickly just opening up a present, looking at it and then going on to the next, I decided I needed to change things to slow down the process. The next Christmas, on each wrapped gift I put a clue as to who the present was for, like a habit of the person or anything that had happened to the recipient. Then we’d guess and figure out who the gift was for, usually amid lots of laughter. This way we would open only one present at a time and everyone enjoyed seeing what the other one got. Our kids loved it and insist that we do it like that every year. —Carina Reimers

Keeping It Funny

I keep my eye out every year for an amusing story or song to play on Christmas Eve. A good example (and one we replay every few years) is David Sedaris’s “6 to 8 Black Men.” —Elizabeth Dilworth

Christmas on Valentine’s Day

Growing up, we always left our Christmas trees up until Valentine’s Day. We often went into the mountains to cut them wild. Then, they were so beautiful, healthy and long lasting, we didn’t want to take them down. These trees tended to be too big—wild and bushy—and we’d have to top them; so some of them ended up looking like they were growing through our relatively high ceilings. We just got used to these wild, bushy presences and the forested feel they brought to our living room and didn’t want to take them down. By Valentine’s Day, it would get kind of embarrassing. After a couple of years of this all happening by accident, it kind of became a tradition, and we wound up really enjoying being the last family to get our tree up and the last one to take it down. We valued absurdity, and made a tradition of it. —Name withheld by request

Solstice Celebration

I like to celebrate the winter solstice by making bird feeders with the kids, lighting candles and making sunshiny-face cookies or pancakes. For the kids, I go to their school and teach about the solstice, and one year I gave all the preschoolers in my daughter’s class a clementine with a smiley face and a votive candle to celebrate the light. —Julie Konrad

Giving Begets Getting

As we were blessed with two boys, we decided as soon as the oldest married that we would celebrate our family Christmas the weekend between Christmas and New Year. Doing that would allow their wives to celebrate with their families, as they’d done their entire lives, without feeling they had to go to several homes on Christmas Eve or Day. A side benefit has been that we are also invited to the homes of our daughters-in-law on the day their families celebrate; so we get to go to more than one celebration. —Betty Addis

Farm Boy

Each year a group of kids from school would take a field trip to my family’s farm, pile onto a trailer pulled by our old trusty International tractor and head off into the woods to find the perfect tree for the school Christmas tree. We would spend the better part of an hour being pulled through the 20 acres of pine trees that surrounded one of our fields until we found just the right tree (usually in the 15-foot range). Next, we all got to take turns using a handsaw to cut it down. We then loaded it onto the trailer and prepared it for the ride back to the school (about five miles away). Along the way we would stop off at our farmhouse and warm up with some homemade hot chocolate and cookies. When the tree finally arrived at school, we all worked to build a stand for it and set it up in the main entrance to the school, and it was decorated by all of the students. —Michael Bush

Magical Menorah

I am a lapsed Jew, but I at least want my kids to be able to recognize a menorah. So on the first night of Hanukkah each year a sense of duty tugs and I bring out my great-grandparents’ menorah and light ’er up while singing the Hebrew prayer. When singing, I am always flooded with memories of my grandparents, who meant so much to me that I tear up. I’m always happy I did it. —Rose Novog

The Cookie Project

When I was growing up, each year my mom launched the Cookie Project around mid-December. The dining-room table would be covered with, at the very least, six different kinds of cookies. The cookies were then carefully stacked in coffee cans that she collected all year. The cans were stored in the screened porch until it was time for distribution to relatives and friends. Then large decorative paper plates were lined up on her operation central, the dining-room table, and the plates would be stacked with a generous variety of cookies, with bright-foil-wrapped chocolates tucked in to “give more color.” The plates were covered with saran wrap and tied with green or red yarn and delivered. —Rosemary Kenney

I Want Becomes I Give

When my boys were young, we had two traditions that helped tame the Christmas “I want” frenzy. Before holiday shopping began, first, I asked them to donate one of their outgrown toys to a charity—they took this very seriously and naturally with some reservations—after which, we would go to the toy store to buy a new toy to donate. They paid for half the cost from their allowance, and I picked up the other half. This taught them the gift of giving. Today, they are grown men and are committed to helping others in their jobs and personal lives. —Kimberly Lord Stewart

Story Hour

One tradition we have is to tell stories on Christmas Eve over a family dinner at my dad’s house. We hear my dad tell stories about relatives he knew but my kids never met. We hear about how couples met and where people live now. I tell my kids about what I remember of Christmases in Buffalo, where I grew up, when the whole extended family stayed in one small house. The kids love the story of how I woke up under the tree one year with all the presents around me and the tree lit, while the house was silent, and I was afraid to move. —Emily Hellesen