It’s December again, and following our tradition, we’re back with some fun family advent ideas to celebrate the season. You can peek back at some of our previous years’ advent celebrations, like Creating an Advent Reading Calendar and Six Fun Advent Calendar Adventures.
Advent is the four-week season leading up to Christmas. Most advent calendars celebrate Dec 1-24 as a countdown until Christmas Day. However, you don’t have to observe Christmas religiously to celebrate the spirit of Advent and the holiday season. It can be a time to reflect, celebrate the close of a year, and spend time making memories with those you cherish most.
To create a family advent activity calendar, you’ll need to come up with 24 unique ideas for each day of December. (Did you miss the first few days of December? That’s okay. You can start on whatever day of the month it is and plan an activity each day until Christmas.) You can find and download free calendar templates to fill in.
Here are some ideas for activities you might include. Try to include a mix of traditions you already have and new things to try. Make it unique to your family and what is important and meaningful to you.
1. Baking Holiday Cookies
2. Driving around looking at Christmas Lights
3. Watching a classic Christmas movie
4. Making a hot chocolate bar and inventing a new “best cocoa.”
5. Donating items to charity
6. Making Homemade ornaments
7. Christmas Song Karaoke
8. Get in teams and have a gingerbread house-building competition
9. Play a board game that is new to everyone
10. Read a Christmas book together
11. Have the whole family pick out new holiday socks
12. Have Secret Santas perform random acts of kindness for other family members throughout the month
13. (weather permitting) have a snowball fight or build a snowman
14. Decorate the Christmas Tree
15. Go Ice Skating
We hope these ideas inspire you and your family’s advent calendar creations!