To me, one of the highlights of  Christmas is time spent with people you care about, whether they are family or friends, we all tend to make time to catch up with people during December.

But what sorts of things can you do with your immediate family as Christmas activities? Or with a group you are catching up with?

Thanks to Clair’s comment about finding some family activities for Christmas somewhat challenging, I got inspired and am trying to give everyone lots of celebratory ideas!

Simple activities at home

There are many things you can do, of course, but here are a few categories and specific ideas to get you thinking about how to entertain the kids and family at home in the lead up to Christmas…

Family cooking together is a lovely preparation for Christmas

• make an event of putting up your Christmas tree and other decorations – play Christmas music, have some nice snacks at hand, share memories of old Christmases and have fun together
• create a family tradition of writing letters to Santa as a family
• play some Christmas games
• make some Christmas crafts
• create some Christmas gifts
• do some Christmas cooking together
• challenge each other with tongue twisters
• fill in the lyrics of a Christmas song and try some other Christmas word challenges
• read some Christmas books
• try some different types of advent calendar
• sit and watch lots of Christmas movies
• look through old Christmas photos – maybe do some scrapbooking together
• do some silly family things

Outings and other activities

Sometimes you just need to get out of the house or you want the excitement of doing something different, so I’ve also listed some Christmas activities you can visit…

• walk around your area and check out the decorations and Christmas lights – or visit another area and check out their lights!
• visit your closest city and admire the displays and activities – for instance, the Myer windows in Melbourne are a popular outings for families. What can you find in your city?
• take a break and visit another city and check out all their Christmas attractions – don’t forget regional cities can be fun, too, so you can fit a trip into a day or a weekend
• have a picnic in a park as an informal Christmas party – invite all your friends and tell them to bring their friends
• get a group of kids together so they can all write Santa letters and Christmas cards together
• find out where Santa is visiting in your area and go visit him, maybe even get your photo taken with him or some of his elves
• go for a walk in the bush and see which trees would be good to decorate – or not!
• look around for some celebrations of other cultures – maybe there is a display or event for Hannukkah, Eid-as_Adhe or Bodhi Day near you
• deliver some Christmas items to a nursing home, hospital or charity
• arrange to visit some people in a nursing home, community home, hospice or hospital – just a friendly chat will brighten them up, or you could perform some carols or a Christmas story for them
  

  Some of the displays in historic Maldon were well worth the drive.

Add some excitement to your Christmas plans

Set up a family advent calendar where each day you select an activity (eg have them on pieces of paper in a jar – maybe have a weekend jar and a weekday jar though to allow for different amounts of time available) to do as a family.

As well as doing anything in the above lists, what else would your calendar could include?

* Images courtesy of 123rf & LoveSanta