Christmas Traditions

 Holiday | Traditions | Bonus 

Christmas Traditions 

A holiday post about my Christmas Eve & Christmas Day traditions + two Christmas Spotify playlists for 2022!!! 

Hello Sweet Friend!

Happy Christmas Eve Eve!!! 

Today I am talking about Christmas Traditions! I love christmas traditions, I love hearing other people talk about christmas traditions, I love doing Christmas traditions…if you couldn’t tell, I love christmas traditions! So that is what we are going to be chatting about today! 

I’m going to be focusing just on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Traditions because if I do the whole season this post will be WAYYY too long, lol. 

Make sure to comment and tell me: What are YOUR favorite Christmas traditions? 

Christmas Eve (night)

Stockings (or one present) 

At night, usually before our traditional movie watching, we open our stockings. Usually there are some chocolates or sweet stocking stuffers. Sometimes my mom will make me and my siblings homemade gifts and we will open those on Christmas Eve. My mom’s homemade presents are always my favorite! I still have all my blankets and Lovies from past birthdays and Christmases! 

Hot Chocolate & Cookies

Right before the movie, we will make hot chocolate and *sometimes* will eat some kind of cookie. Either we bake the cookies on Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve Eve. It really sets up the perfect holiday atmosphere. 

Now on to the most important christmas eve traditions: 

Watch The Nativity Story (or another classic)

Every Christmas Eve we try to watch The Nativity Story. It is a live action dramatization of Jesus’s birth. I absolutely love this story and that we get to follow young Mary through her whole pregnancy and even follow Joseph. I love them and I love seeing their story come to life! 

Another side tradition of mine is to focus on one (or two) characters from the Christmas story. This year it has been Mary and Zachariah! 

Shepherds Hunt 

To end the night we do our Shepherd Hunt. This started when I was really little, I actually don’t remember when it started but this has always been my favorite Christmas Eve (and Christmas season) tradition. 

When it's dark outside, papa will go set up the “manger scene”. All the lights will be turned off and we will all wrap ourselves in blankets to look like shepherds. Each of us will bring a stuffed animal to be our “sheep”. Then papa will hold a flashlight pointed to the ceiling to be our STAR. We'll sing “O Holy Night” or “Silent Night” and follow the star to the manger. In my parents room on the ground are blankets in a circle with pillows and stuffed animals and in the middle is our baby Jesus. Baby Jesus is either a stuffed animal, baby doll, or one of my siblings when they were babies. We sing Christmas songs in the dark and then read the passage in scripture when the angel comes to the shepherds. 

It is one of my favorite traditions and is always something I look forward to the whole year. We cannot have Christmas without doing our Shepherds Hunt. 

Christmas Day (aka What We Do In The Morning)

Sleep in (mostly)

First things first, Christmas morning we sleep in. And by we, I mean me. My brothers are always the first ones up followed by the rest of us. I am usually the last person up because I like my sleep, lol. I’m actually thinking of breaking this tradition this year and getting up early (I said maybe, I have not yet made that a plan but it could be a fun little surprise, especially with the next tradition). 

Bake Cinnamon Rolls 

After we all wake up, I make Christmas cinnamon rolls (why I might wake up early this year)! Most of my family is gluten free which made this tradition impossible for a few years. But I finally was able to crack the magic baking code and now we have the best ever gluten-free Christmas cinnamon rolls! Hurray! I love cinnamon rolls! I’m craving them just writing this post, lol! 

Read The Christmas Story 

After/with cinnamon rolls we will read the Christmas story from Matthew or Luke (or sometimes both). I usually read them both in the morning before our family joint Bible time, so I get double the story! <3 

Open Presents (while a christmas movie (Charlie Brown) plays in the background) 

Presents!!! Now it is finally time to open presents! We will usually have a Christmas movie playing in the background (Charlie Brown Christmas) or Christmas music! I love it! 

We try to be organized and take our time with our presents so we have an opening present system and I think we will do that this year as well. 

Stay Downstairs and Play With *read* Presents 

Then we will stay downstairs to enjoy Christmas day together as a family! My brothers will play with their new toys, my sister will be reading or journaling, and I will be reading. It becomes really chill and sweet and I love this part of christmas day. 

Christmas Movie Marathon with LOTS Of Christmas Cookies 

For the rest of the day we will have christmas movies/music on and will have christmas cookies and treats. It is such a fun day. I love Christmas! 

Birthday Cake for Jesus

Since Christmas is the day we celebrate Jesus’s birthday, this year we are going to bake Jesus a cake and make it like an official birthday party with candles and everything. I think this will be a really fun way to celebrate Jesus’s birthday! 

Extras: 

For fun I am including my 2022 Christmas playlists! Here are the Christmas songs I have been listening to this season and will be listening to on Christmas Eve & Christmas!!! 

Comment and tell me if you make a Christmas playlist like me! 

My Repeat Christmas Song 2022  

My 2022 Christmas Playlist  

My Instrumental Christmas Playlist 

I really like having instrumental music to listen to in the background or while I am writing so I thought I would include that here too!  

Bonus Story Update:

Every week this December I have been giving updates for Broken Ballerina in my weekly newsletter (which you will get when you subscribe to this blog)! I thought I’d share a sneak peek on my blog this week for Christmas! I wrote 12,252 words this week for Broken Ballerina and it felt so good to write! Last week I didn’t get much writing in so this is huge for me! 

Now, without further ado, here is this week’s snippet just for you! 

This is a scene from my leading man and his little brother! This was so fun to write and perfect for happy winter vibes! I hope you all like it! 

…

 My face is freezing and burning all at the same time. I wipe an already melting snowball off my face. I see my brother laughing his head off thinking its the funniest thing whacking me with a snowball. “I’m going to kill you,” I yell and thus commences our brother snowball fight.

“Let us fight to the death!” My brother yells and then gets snowball splattered on his face. 

Its an epic grueling battle of snow. Thankfully there were no casualties but for our clothes which took the bulk of the hits and were starting to soak through. That didn’t stop us, nothing will! 
—Broken Ballerina (a winter story) 

…

Make sure to subscribe to my blog to receive my weekly email because I will be posting more writing updates and another snippet just for you!!! 

***

Discussion Time

Thank you for reading this blog post! I hope you liked this post about my Christmas traditions! This was so fun to put together! I also might put up a Christmas Day post that will either be a post on the day or maybe a short story or just something special. I’m still working on ideas for it, but I want to do something special on my blog for all of you wonderful people who read my blog! 

Till next time, thank you so much for reading! I hope you have a beautiful and magical Christmas season! 

I want to hear from you! Meet me in the comments and tell me what you thought about this post! What are your favorite Christmas traditions? Do we share any of the same traditions? I would love to chat! 

If you have any questions or want to talk, make sure to comment down below! Be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay in the know because I post new content here every week. ALSO, If you want to hear more about my writing and read snippets from my newest story, make sure you are subscribed because I am doing special updates for BLOG SUBSCRIBERS ONLY! 

Merry Christmas sweet friend!  

XOXO Moriyah 🤎