Christmas is almost here and playing Santa for the year is almost over. With less than a handful of days left before Christmas, there are just a few things that my family does to get fully in the Christmas spirit.
One of the activities I save to do with the kids for when they are out of school and daycare is build gingerbread houses and/or decorate gingerbread man cookies. The reason I wait until winter break has started is simply because there isn’t enough time to do it through the week on a school night and this makes for a fun activity during one of the stay home days during winter break.
I love making this as easy for me as possible. So, what I try to do, if I can find them, is buy pre-built gingerbread houses and pre-baked cookies. Then I take my 5-year-old down the baking aisle and let her pick out things she wants to use as decorations to embellish her house and cookies. She always has a blast picking out the icing colors and sprinkles. Once we have all the goods, we lay them all out on the kitchen table and let my daughter go at it. She typically wants Mommy and Daddy to decorate a little bit with her so it turns into a fun family affair.
One year I remember finding a really cute gingerbread house craft instead of a real gingerbread house made of cookies and we did that instead. That was a big success as well and the good thing about that option is it can last all season. If you wanted to, I’m sure it could even be stored in a box and brought out each year for Christmas.
But no matter how we do it, we try to always do the classic memory of building and decorating gingerbread. We love doing it later in the holiday season because we can keep the decorated gingerbread man cookies we made, and sit them out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Santa loves having home-made decorated cookies and our kids love that Santa gets to share in them.
The other thing we wait to do this late in the holiday season is getting personal Santa letters for the kids. Now, I can’t take any credit on this idea. This is something my grandma started doing for me and my cousins when we were growing up and she has continued the tradition with her great-grandkids. It is one of the best holiday traditions in our household and it only costs you a little bit of time and an envelope and stamp.
Every year, the week of Christmas we get letters from Santa in the mail to the kids. The letter tells the kids that Santa knows how well they’ve been doing and to get excited for his big visit in a few days! The kids absolutely love this every year. This year, I had our elf on the shelf bring the letter back from the north pole. Waking up and seeing her elf holding a note from Santa made my 5-year-old so giddy. This is a tradition that I hope my kids will pass on to their kids one day.
We try to keep the Christmas spirit going all the way through Christmas in our household and by doing little things like this spread out throughout the season it really helps.
With Christmas in a few days, I hope that all you mamas have a great time with your families and enjoy watching the magic happen.
Merry Christmas!
ANN BURNS is a Morgantown native, raising two young children with her husband, Drake. She writes weekly columns for The Dominion Post. Contact her at Columns@DominionPost.com.
