Holiday Activities and Traditions the Whole Family Can Enjoy

Spending time with the people that you love and cherish can allow you to feel fulfilled, happy and filled with joy.

This holiday season, we encourage you to spend quality time with your family doing things that everyone will enjoy! We know it can be difficult to find activities that will accommodate the different generations in your family, so we put together a list of some fun activities the whole family will love!

What Activities Can We Do as a Family?

If you are celebrating Christmas, we encourage you to lean into the festivities by embracing the activities of the Christmas season! These activities can include shopping for a tree at a tree farm, trimming the tree and decorating, Christmas caroling or simply creating an advent calendar together. By embracing the season, you can create a festive environment for your family that will be inclusive of all ages.

If you are celebrating Hanukkah, we encourage you to focus on traditions and activities that are centered around Hanukkah! If your family includes children of all ages, with or without disabilities, and elderly adults, we encourage you to find something that you all can agree on and enjoy together. Such activities include: playing a game of dreidel, creating your own dreidel board game, creating an eight-night countdown calendar or reading books that are about the season of Hanukkah.

Of course, you and your family do not have to participate in religious celebrations or activities to celebrate the holiday season. Nonpartisan family traditions can include:

• Holiday baking. Everyone enjoys baking delicious holiday treats such as gingerbread cookies, pumpkin or apple pie, sweet breads or family recipes. By bringing the family together in the kitchen, you can facilitate the blending of generations and recipes, allowing grandparents and grandchildren to bond and create memories.
• Watching festive holiday movies! Whether it is The Grinch or Elf, we encourage you to make some delicious popcorn, cuddle up in blankets and invite the whole family over for a holiday movie party!
• Create homemade paper cards for the holiday season! Grandparents and grandchildren alike can create master pieces with a few pieces of construction paper, markers, sparkles and glue! You can choose to gift your works of art to your family members or hand them out to your neighbors through out the holiday season.
• Have a slumber party! Nothing feels quite like the holiday season like bundling up in comfy pajamas, warm blankets and camping out in the living room together. If the elderly adults in your life cannot sleep comfortably on the ground or the couch, we encourage you to build a slumber-party friendly environment in their room.
• Buy an elf on the shelf and have fun hiding it from the rest of your family! Elf on the shelf can be a fun way for the family to bond and can be a fun game to play with the younger generation in your family.
• Visit museums! Whether that is a science museum or a history museum, the holidays are the perfect time to spend time together visiting a new, or a family favorite, museum in the area! Grandparents and grandchildren alike will enjoy learning about new concepts and brushing up on their history!
• Volunteer together! Whether that is participating in donating to a food bank, feeding the homeless or simply donating warm clothes to those in need, volunteering can bring generations together for the holidays. Not only can this be a fun new family tradition, but it will teach young children the value of giving back during the holiday season!

By creating new family traditions, you are not only allowing the living generations to bond and enjoy each other’s company, but you are creating a path for future generations to carry on the rituals in the future. Family traditions are special and unique to your family, creating a feeling of warmth and cheerfulness to be included. Family traditions do not have to be exclusive to the holiday season, as they are important to carry on year-round. However, the holiday season is a time for family bonding and quality time together, making it easier to have fun as a family unit!

We encourage you all to spend time with your loved ones during the holiday season. Spending time with the people that you love can bring contentment, as well as a sense of warmness and happiness in your heart. We hope that you and your family can create new traditions and activities that will bring joy and happiness for years to come!