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Holiday Traditions: December 1st Box
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At the beginning of the holiday season our elf, Clydesdale, comes in all his glory bringing with him a North Pole breakfast and presents for the boys (most of the time the present is new pajamas). This year, however, I've decided that mom and dad need to get more credit so we are starting a new tradition - a December 1st box. Of course the elf will still come with his North Pole breakfast but the gift giving will be from mom and dad.
I got this idea from my mother in law who years ago started a tradition of giving us a box full of wrapped books that included activities to go along with the books for each day in December. As the years have progressed, and we now have many Christmas books to fill our shelves, she gives us a box closer to Christmas filled with treats, games, snuggly socks, stickers, toys, etc. and sometimes an ornament for our tree. The kids look forward to it every year and so I thought it would be fun to incorporate this idea into a new tradition - The December 1st Box.
The December 1st box can be for the whole family or you can give each child their own individual box, customizing it to fit the style of your family. The idea behind it is to kick off the holiday season with some good old fashioned fun - you know - the kind where you spend time together #ihaveteenagerswithphones. You certainly don't have to do it exactly on December 1st - but near the beginning of the holiday season. I'll be giving mine to my kids the first weekend in December.
The plan is to have a large wrapped box and inside have more wrapped items - because it's all about the excitement and surprise of unwrapping a gift. I thought of putting a theme to the box like Movie Night, Polar Express Night, Christmas Light Express (where we make hot cocoa, have candy canes and drive around town looking at all the Christmas lights), Game night, etc. and include items to go along with the theme. Unfortunately, I couldn't decide on just one as we do many of these traditions throughout the season so I decided to put items for each of these traditions within the box and we can unwrap them on December 1st and then bring them back out as needed throughout the season.
Some items I have found to fill our box this year:
Elf Squishmallows - my kids ask for these every time we go to the store. I truly do not understand the excitement behind these things - but they love them nonetheless so here we are. Girl elf version HERE.
Favorite treats - anyone else's kids obsessed with PEZ?? Even my older boys love it.
A Christmas book
Some of our favorites:
A Christmas game - My kids like easy, brainless games and mom likes games that aren't too competitive - hoping this one does the trick.
Puzzles - 2020 was the year of puzzles for us and now we pull them out and grab a few new ones each year. I like the 100 piece puzzles (puzzle anxiety is a real thing). My kids and hubby like the 300 piece. We attempted a 500 piece last year and everyone got frustrated - but for you serious puzzlers I've included a link for it.
Christmas pajamas - I like giving these at the beginning of the season so we can wear and enjoy them all December long. I love matching - but with large age gaps in the family we often have to do coordinating. A few brands I love that often have sales are Hannah Anderson and Burts Bees - plus they have pet pajamas too - who doesn't love to match their doggy?
An advent calendar - I found THIS one on Amazon for a reasonable price and thought it would be fun to have something a little different this year. Again, depending on your budget you could certainly purchase an advent for each child. I've seen really simple candy advents you can find at Walmart , lego advents and I've even seen a friend with an advent from Young Living Oils which was really fun. Another fantastic idea would be to have paper supplies to create your own countdown chain. Growing up my mom would purchase candies we loved and we would lay out a long strip of seran wrap and roll candies into the seran wrap then separate it with ribbon to create our own count down chain of sorts - I'll be sharing a how to soon.
Other ideas include:
Christmas concert or Christmas light show tickets (we have Christmas in Color and Luminaria where we live) tied to hot hands or new gloves and/or hats. My family is obsessed with Carhartt beanies - I love that they have kid and adult sizes.
Nutcracker tickets tied to a paintable wooden nutcracker. THIS kit from Amazon is so cute!
For older kids a package of paper with snowflake templates - last year my boys got really into this and we searched the internet for templates and found a few websites with great ones:
Snuggly socks
Coordinating Christmas Ties for boys, headbands/dresses for girls. I chose THIS tie for my hubby because it matches perfectly with the plaid Christmas skirt from THIS post.
Hot chocolate kit - complete with THESE to go cups from My Mind's Eye (I am obsessed with everything this company produces).
Animated snow globes. I love anything that brings Christ into Christmas and THIS snow globe is beautiful! However, I also like plastic - less breakable - we have one similar to THIS.
So tell me - do you do a box like this for your family? What do you put inside?
Want MORE ideas for Christmas and Holiday traditions? Follow along for more ideas throughout December on Instagram and Pinterest and subscribe to my monthly newsletter for updates!
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