Ideas for Extended Family Christmas Celebration?

[gardenswithkids]

Please share your best ideas and traditions for Christmas celebrations with extended family.

Do you exchange gifts in a creative way? Do you exchange gifts at all? Do you contribute together towards a charity or other worthwhile cause instead of gift giving?

Do you play any special games? Tell stories? Music? Other entertainment?

Do you have any little ways of keeping Christ in Christmas that less religious relatives wouldn’t find threatening?

Thanks in advance for sharing!

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Jesus’ Birthday Cake. We either have extended family Christmas on Christmas Eve or the weekend before that, so it makes sense to little kids, who also get their birthdays moved for family convenience.

In our extended family, Jesus gets a decorated birthday cake. In tight times, somebody makes it. In more flush times, it comes from a bakery. Depending on who gets that responsibility, it could be a regular birthday sheet cake with roses; or Christmas deocrations; or a plastic manger scene. I prefer to get whipped cream frosting, but that’s neither here nor there. It always has piped on it, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS”.

The ceremony is what’s important.

Candles. Big ones. Little ones. Lots of them. After all, Jesus always was, always is, and always will be, and earthwise, he’s darn old. They are on the table. They are on the cake.

And everybody, even old Uncle Richard, sings the “Happy Birthday” song to Jesus. The little kids clap. The big kids laugh. The parents and grandparents and great-grandparents smile. All the little kids blow out the candles.

And even the Jewish relatives have no trouble with a birthday cake for Jesus.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Jesus’ Birthday Cake. We either have extended family Christmas on Christmas Eve or the weekend before that, so it makes sense to little kids, who also get their birthdays moved for family convenience…

Thank you for the suggestion. They have done the birthday cake in the past, but it’s been a long time. The birthday cake would remind everyone of the reason we’re getting together–which won’t be on Christmas this year. The birthday cake might be a really nice thing to add back into our celebration.

My husband and I are the only ones with really little kids. We host the party this year. With our neices and nephews (and some of my children too) growing older, my SIL and I talked about trying to find some new traditions beyond just the usually eating and gift exchange. We don’t want to just “take away” the gift exchange–we’re looking to replace it with something better. But we don’t know what.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Chairty mitten and hat drive?

 

[Siena]

Call your local parish and ask if you can sponsor a family. (Like they have broken up on the parish Christmas tree.)

Provide a meal, coats, gloves, toys, whatever they need.

You can ask relatives for donations of $ or specific items, and everyone (if your party is far enough back) can look at/wrap the various items, which you can deliver to the parish.