I have always loved the way that my family likes to honor Christ in our Christmas Traditions, this week I am sharing how my family and I spend our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with you.

Christmas Eve

Growing up my family and I always spent Christmas Eve with my Grandparents where we would make homemade pizza and have a pizza party in honor of baby Jesus and then open some presents together. (Not the ones from Santa.) Later during the night we would head to our small town church for the midnight service where at the end of the service they sing Silent Night. The really cool thing about this particular song is that they sing it in English as well as German!!! I always loved listening to my Grandpa sing the song in German as my family on my Dad’s side is completely of German descent. (Insert Hogan’s Hero’s jokes here.) We always ended the night driving around to look at Christmas lights in our neighborhood, then heading back to my grandparents for homemade cookies and other delicious deserts before heading home and to bed for the evening,

Since my Grandparents have passed we have kept most of the traditions just a little bit differently.  This year our Christmas Service happens to fall on Christmas Eve (it doesn’t always!) and there are five different services at our main church campus location. My family and I no longer belong to the small town church that my dad and I were raised in, as we now belong to Northridge Church which is a mega church in Plymouth Michigan. I am planning on attending the 2:16pm service this year. The night of Christmas Eve my family and I still like to celebrate Jesus’s birthday by making homemade pizzas. It’s our version of a pizza party followed by Christmas movies.  (We also now wait on opening up our presents until morning.)

Christmas Day

I have always loved my families Christmas Day traditions and how much it revolves around the reason for the season, Jesus. Every year we sleep in and once we wake up we get dressed and ready to start our day. Packer Brunch (a family tradition, it’s like an egg soufflé casserole) would have been baking in the oven and Jesus’s birthday cake in the form of a coffee cake would be at the table ready to start our morning. Before anyone goes near the tree we sit down at the table and the youngest reads the story of Jesus’s birth to us all. As the story ends everyone sings Happy Birthday to Jesus and then the kid’s blow out the candle in the coffee/birthday cake. After these morning traditions have been completed, we then fill up our plates with Packer Brunch and coffee cake and make our way to the living room to open presents. In our family we open up one present at a time, this gives each and every one of us the opportunity to enjoy the act of giving as well as receiving (plus we make sure to thank everyone that gave us gifts, laugh, tear up, share memories and literally enjoy the morning being together).  To be honest, when I was younger we even took a couple of breaks so that I could play with and enjoy the presents that I had already unwrapped.  Hence our Christmas morning would literally take up the entire morning.

After our morning celebrations the rest of the day usually varies on what time or where Christmas Dinner is being held.  This year we plan on eating at 1pm at our house so I don’t have to go far. Our family and friends will all gather and enjoy our meal and time just being together. Eventually everyone will go home and we will settle in with Christmas movies once again. 

What are your family traditions for Christmas? I would love to hear how you honor Jesus in your celebrations?

Merry Christmas!