Christmas traditions don’t have to cost an arm and a leg to be remembered. To help you stay on budget while making memories this Christmas season, here are five fun (and low-cost) traditions you can your family can enjoy.
1. Christmas Countdown with Books
For the past several years, I’ve wrapped up 25 Christmas books and movies. Each night, a child opens one and we gather as a family to read the book or watch the movie.
Now, you can go out and buy all new books and movies. But, I don’t do that.
When I first started, I bought 2. Then I checked out a bunch from the library, and used those along with ones I already owned.
The next year, I kept my eyes peeled in thrift stores, looking for Christmas books. When I found one, I bought it and added it to my collection.
Each year, the majority of the books we unwrap are ones the kids already own. But, because I keep these ones kept up out of reach all year long, they aren’t bored of them. And often, they don’t even remember that we have them.
For more information on how we do our Christmas countdown with books, you can read this post:
Family Christmas Tradition: The Christmas Countdown
2. Home Alone Marathon
Do you enjoy the Home Alone movies? My family does!
Each year on December 1st or 2nd, we have a marathon movie night. We pop some popcorn, make some cookies, and whatever other goodies we can think of. Here’s the spread the kids helped me make this year:
Then the kids all set up beds made out of blankets and pillows on the floor. We settle down with snacks and cozy spots and watch the movies back to back.
You have a couple of options for the movies:
- Buy them (either digitally or on DVD)
- Check them out from the library
- Rent them through Amazon Prime or another service
- Borrow them from a friend
I opted to purchase the DVD collection from Amazon. It was a decent price per movie, and I knew we’d get a lot of use out of them.
The next day, my kids wanted to try creating some Home Alone style “traps” around the house. We had so much fun working in teams. Here’s one that they created:
When you can do something out of the ordinary like this to bring a movie to life, it makes the whole experience even more memorable.
If Home Alone isn’t a collection your family enjoys, what other Christmas movie marathons could you have? You could try:
- Hallmark Christmas movies (if you have the channel, you can just watch what they’re showing without having to purchase anything)
- The Santa Clause
- Family Christmas Favorites
3. Decorating Gingerbread Houses
When you buy fancy kits with gingerbread, this Christmas project costs a ton. But, if you use graham crackers and make small houses, you can keep the costs low.
We buy candy in bulk from Winco, and from the Dollar Tree. Inexpensive cookies and dry cereal also make fun decorations. My husband is great at making custom shapes and sizes of houses for the kids. We’ve had gingerbread tractors, duplexes and more. We typically make a time-lapse video when we make them and enjoy watching the videos as a family.
Here are a few houses we’ve decorated over the years:
And here is one of our time lapse videos. You can see all of our fun condensed down to 25 seconds! So much sugar…
This year we’re going to decorate gingerbread houses with Bryan’s mom, and we’re looking forward to spending time with her while we do this fun tradition.
4. Design Decorations
Turn your kids loose with some construction paper, basic art supplies, scissors, and glue, and you’ll be amazed at the decorations they can create. My kids love this free time to create whatever is on their mind.
My daughter, Ellie, especially enjoys creating. She made these pop-up scenes a couple of years ago:
In addition to scissors and glue, she used yarn, wrapping paper, stickers, markers, crayons, and paper.
They also enjoy turning canning lids and rings into decorations to hang on the tree. Simple cover the flat piece with paper and let them create on there. Then you can glue the ring to it with some hot glue.
What will your kids create?
5. Make Christmas Cookies
I like letting the kids play and learn with cookie cutters (the ones that aren’t sharp of course…). But, using cookie cutters for what they were designed for? I do that once a year. At Christmas time.
Decorating cookies is something my kids love doing. Me? Not so much…I never have the patience to make them look as beautiful as they do in my mind.
But, each December, we make it a point to decorate cookies. By making the cookies and frosting homemade, they are a low-cost activity.
Last year and this year we got together with my sisters to decorate. That was a lot of fun!
What Christmas Traditions Does Your Family Enjoy?
Do you do any of these low-costs family Christmas traditions? What other ones do you enjoy? I’d love for you to share in the comments.
And please, pin it for later!
