Simple Christmas Eve Traditions | Simplifying Christmas

Our simple Christmas Eve traditions are stress-free and fun for everyone. We focused our Christmas Eve traditions around spending time with the family. It is just us and the kids most years and everyone looks forward to this night more than any other night of the year.

As busy parents, trucking kids around most nights and weekends too, we chose to make Christmas Eve very low key and simple. The last thing I wanted to do was hope in the car to go somewhere fancy. Both my husband and I were generally working that day so cooking a huge dinner (unless it was the Coca-Cola Roast Beef), a big fancy meal was out of the question.

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Our Simple Christmas Eve Tradition

Our simple Christmas Eve tradition is made up of:

a simple meal idea (appetizers and finger foods),
a family theme gift that each child opens (so for us, this became a 3-part gift over the years)
family fun night (which included watching Norad’s Santa Tracker)
treats left for Santa (generally not as fancy as the picture, sometimes Santa got left a beer and store-bought baking)
stockings stuffed and Breakfast Casserole prepped and put in the slow cooker

Family Theme Gifts

The family theme gifts always revolved around family fun nights. One year we would do a movie theme, another year we would do a game theme. Some years it would be video games, while others we would do board and card games.

Depending upon the budget and deals we were able to find, we would choose the items that we would use and would bring us closer to the kids.

Movie Themes

For movie theme gifts we’ve purchased everything from classic movies that we grew up with, like Popeye, to the Star Wars collection. Movie style popcorn makers were found one year, while another year we splurged on a new Blueray and projector setup to do a big screen in-home theatre.

We’ve had big budget years and not-so-big budget years but we still enjoyed every single Christmas Eve together.

Game Themes

Similar to our Movie Theme years, there were some years that were big budget years and others that were not-so-big but we still made the best of the year by spending it together having fun. The bigger years we may have purchased a new video game system. Our favorite system when the kids were growing up was the Nintendo systems. I felt the games were more kid and family friendly, but that is my personal opinion.

Other years we found games that the kids and us would enjoy together. The kids are quite spread out in age, so it was interesting trying to find games that all of us would enjoy. Some of the games were “older-kid-friendly” so those would be played after our daughter went to bed. Now that she is a teen picking games is a bit easier but we still try to make them family friendly so we can all play.

Simplifying Christmas

This simple Christmas Eve traditions are what our kids enjoy the most out of the holiday. Last year our oldest had moved away from home and the two younger kids wouldn’t start their Christmas Eve without him joining us first. It ended up being a late night he had to work and then drive 3 hours to get here, but it warmed my heart knowing that they needed him with us for the night to be complete.

To fill in the time, we went skating at our local community outdoor rink. That was a nice addition to our Christmas Eve and it was free (even better). We’ve already started shopping for the Christmas Eve family gift this year and can’t wait to spend that time with all three kids that will be home with us again.

May your Christmas Eve traditions be simple and joyful as well.