Christmas Traditions at the Reeves house

Over on Facebook, several friends have been asking for their friends to post Christmas traditions their family shares. We do so many fun things at our house that I wanted to share! And so, without further adieu:

1. Most years, we take the kids to an angel tree & find 3 angels of the same genders as the kids who are roughly the same age. We let the kids help us shop for those children. It's so much fun to see them getting excited about giving!

2. Samaritan's Purse, Operation Christmas Child: read more about it here. Again, this is something we do to help our kids learn the importance of giving. We love the challenge of filling a shoebox with as many things as we can cram into it. Our box is usually about to pop by the time we turn it in. So much fun!

3. Salvation Army bell ringing! When you read up on all the many many things that the SA does, it becomes such a privelege to be a part of this important ministry. I would love to see the SA offer some sort of bell ringing/collecting for the poor year-round. I guess people would get tired of seeing the red kettles outside store doors, though. Maybe the novelty of the bell ringing ministry is that you can only do it from Thanksgiving til Christmas. Anyway...we take the family & ring the bell for the SA each year. We only started this tradition last year, but it's such a neat thing. The kids LOVE it. Savannah makes it her goal to say hi & bye to EVERY person who walks by. I guess she's our PR person! :) Samuel does his best to ring the bell near his sisters' ears & pester them anytime he's got the bell. Sarah just smiles & waves to everyone as they go by. Larry and I stand back & grin a lot. It's fun to see the reactions that people have to CHILDREN ringing the bell. It's also fun to people-watch. You might be surprised by who is the most generous! Last year, while ringing the bell, Larry & I both noticed that the most generous givers were the people we least expected to see stop at all. Sure is a good reminder not to judge a book by its cover!

4. Baking/icing cookies together. The kids & I buy those packages of pre-cut sugar cookie dough & bake them. (Honestly, they only want to decorate them, so cutting down on the mixing & baking & cutting time suits me just fine.) Aside from being really silly while decorating them, we get the added benefit of eating them!!

5. In years past, we've helped in serving a meal to the homeless. Such a cool way for the kids to see, face to face, that there are indeed homeless people living RIGHT HERE.

6. Driving around & looking at lights. We make it our mission to find the most gaudy, tacky displays each year. We have a saying in the car while we're driving around looking for it, too...that is, "Money can't buy class!". I can't believe how many years the tackiest displays are in the fanciest neighborhoods. Complete with 3 inflatables, 2 snowglobes, reindeer on the roof, Santa on a Harley, the "flowing" river of lights in the yard....you get the idea. That one is the winner!

7. A few weeks in advance, when we're in the car & the kids get rowdy, we start a game. I usually go first by humming/whistling the tune to a Christmas song. The first one to guess which song it is gets to go next. It continues on for a long time because everyone wants to get several turns.

8. Canned food drives! By Christmas, we're usually totally stripped of canned goods in our pantry. Between the schools & church & other community food drives, it's fun to see how many cans of food we can give. This year, Samuel's teachers organized a night for the kids in their classes to meet at the school & drive around the local neighborhoods going door to door to collect food. It was so much fun to see the grins & hear the giggles as the kids piled back into the car with ONE can of green beans or a couple cans of soup! I love seeing them get excited about helping someone else!

9. Giggle & Spit
Yeah, you read that right. If you read my blog last year on Christmas Eve, you heard about this & saw pictures. (Feel free to dig back through the archives if you missed it.) The idea behind this game (it's called Giggle & Spit) is that you have 1 person who's "it". The rest of the group gets a big mouthful of water & holds a towel. The person who is "it" has to say/do/act funny, telling jokes, dancing silly...whatever it takes...to make the others laugh. Whoever laughs (& therefore spits the water out--onto the towel!) is the new "it" and the game begins again. It's hilarious!

10. We have a very BIG birthday party for Jesus on Christmas morning. Our 'rule' in our house is that the kids aren't allowed to go into the living room (where the gifts & Santa stuff is) until AFTER our party (we do it in one of their bedrooms). The idea behind that is that they focus on the reason we are celebrating this special day BEFORE we dive into piles of wrapping paper & bows & boxes. The first year we did this, I wasn't sure if they'd just 'tolerate' the party time in order to get to the gifts, but it turns out that they LOVE IT. In fact, it's grown each year. We've added new layers to the party. It's grown from just singing Happy Birthday to Jesus & reading the Bible story to a full-fledged, all out party! We bake a cake on Christmas Eve & decorate it. We have candles & party hats & noise makers & party plates/napkins. We take pictures & act silly and have a blast, as if Jesus was physically in the room with us to celebrate His birthday. After we have cake (for breakfast!) and party it up, we read the Bible story (Luke 2). This year, we're adding a new layer to that. Samuel has asked if he can read the story. Before we agreed to that, the girls were asking if they can do it next year and the year after. Looks like we're going to have an annual fuss over who gets to read the story of the birth of Jesus now! How fun is that?!

11. Christmas movies! There are several movies that we watch EVERY year. The original animated version of The Grinch & Elf are at the top of that list. Then we enjoy lots of family nights where we pop popcorn & watch other movies together. This year, ABC Family did a cool thing. Beginning on the night after T'giving, they've played a different Christmas movie every night. We've watched a lot of those!

12. We have a few special snacks/treats that we only make at Christmastime. We love Puppy Chow & rainbow bark. Yum yum! In addition to those things, we usually spend more time than usual in the chairs of local restaurants. We are blessed to do that by my students at school. A common Christmas gift for me is gift cards to local places, so we get to enjoy those special treats while the kids are out of school for the holidays!

13. That brings me to our last 'tradition' of sorts. I'm thinking of tweaking this one next year...I'll explain that in a minute. I'm not sure if this really counts as 'tradition' or not, but anyway, we don't go very crazy on gifts. Our family members get very minimal gifts costing no more than $10 each. On both sides of our family, it's gotten to be too costly to buy for *everyone*. We don't buy for any of the adults on my side of the family. And because there are so many kids, we draw names & only buy for a few of the kids. We have birthdays to spoil them if you missed buying for a neice or nephew at Christmas time. The adults don't swap gifts at all. On Larry's side of the family, the gifts are small & simple. The kids get fun stuff, but our get together is about spending time together, not focusing on presents! In our home, the kids get "matching" gifts, meaning each one of them gets the same basic items (but specific to them). This year, each one of them got 1 $10 gift card to a store we know they'll enjoy, 1 pkg of socks & 1 pkg of underwear, 1 DVD, 1 CD & a new set of pajamas. Santa brings things that are only slightly more "fun" than mom & dad. You know...magazines, toys, things that particular child would enjoy.

I've heard from several friends over the past few years about a new thing that I think we may do next year. Because Jesus only got 3 gifts (gold, frankenscence & myrrh), they only give their children 3 gifts. They can spend slightly more than usual on those 3 gifts because there are only three things. I like that. We may do it next year.


I know there are more things, but I'm drawing a blank & beginning to get sleepy. If I think of others, I'll come back & edit this post later. Comment with some of your family's traditions! I'd love to hear them!