Our Favorite Simple December Traditions

The Celebrations Binder was designed to be a simple system that makes marking occasions big and small easier and more fun! It is TOTALLY POSSIBLE for you to be a person who joyfully celebrates alongside others, leading to deeper relationships and a stronger family culture. We believe in you! :) 

Though you could use the Celebrations Binder to plan an elaborate birthday party, we pictured it being used more for the small, everyday rituals and traditions that make up a full life. In that spirit, we're excited to share favorite December experiences treasured by our team, and we'd love to hear yours in the comments!

Jess: Each December, Logan and I host a Holiday Errand, which is a long-standing Thore family tradition! We invite our friends to swing by on a Saturday morning in December to enjoy coffee and snacks, and we send them out to finish their holiday errands with a plate or two of baked goodies to deliver some holiday cheer to someone in need—a homebound neighbor, apartment security guard, or the delivery man bringing all their Amazon boxes to the door!

Lara: We have a lot of fruit trees in our garden: two lemon, three orange, and two kumquat. In the winter, it gets too cold for the fruit trees to live outside, so we bring them into our house. Instead of decorating a traditional fir Christmas tree, we decorate two of the smaller fruit trees that spend the winter on the dining room table!

Jordan: We make a birthday cake for Jesus a few days before Christmas to bring to Christmas dinner. We light candles and sing and the entire thing. It's literally a birthday party over at the Coakley house on December 25th!

Ashlea: On Christmas morning, before we open presents, my dad reads the story of the birth of Jesus, from Luke 2, out loud. It's a simple way for us all to be reminded of what we're really celebrating before the hustle and bustle of the day.

Julie: A tradition that we will carry on even after moving away from our families earlier this year is one Dean and I have done since high school together! We make a generous batch of hot chocolate or apple cider and drive around looking at holiday lights. This year, Jack (our son) will be 16 months, and he might just get to enjoy a (cooled-down) holiday drink and lights, too.

Casey: My family often does matching pajamas, and one of my favorite years, we did a holiday pajama competition. There were thrift-store finds galore, and the winner was the most festive!

Marissa: With little ones of my own, my longtime favorite tradition of midnight mass won't be happening for a bit. Though I know we'll get back to that once our children are older, my new favorite is visiting Santa. Regardless of the photographic outcome, seeing the magic of the season through our sweet children's eyes is something I simply adore.

Emily: Sometime in the week between Christmas and New Year's, John and I head to a restaurant for our "celebration and review" dinner. We choose a restaurant with a quiet atmosphere that lends itself to a leisurely dinner and bring a notebook that we've been filling in for the last few years. We borrow a few questions from the PowerSheets® Prep Work and answer them together, along with others (like where we want to travel next year, and which organizations we want to prioritize for charitable giving). It's a time to cheer on our union and look forward with excitement, and it's one of my favorite nights of the whole year.

We'd love to hear! What's one of your favorite simple December traditions?