It’s Christmas Eve. Today we are staying home, wrapping a few more Christmas presents, and enjoying family. Tonight we will go to our Christmas Eve church service as a family and then we’ll head to the Outback Restaurant for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner out. We started that tradition many years ago and it’s the only time Mark and I treat all of our kids (married and still at home) and their spouses, to dinner out.
Our oldest daughter and her hubby alternate holidays with the families and this year isn’t our year to have Christmas with them. Instead, they’ll come and stay a few days next week. (But they’ll be at our house next Christmas and we’ll get to be a part of baby’s first Christmas!)
What about you? What does your family do on Christmas Eve?
I’m giving extra time for you to participate because it’s likely that many of us will not be on email or internet over the next few days. You can leave a comment until midnight Sunday, Dec 27, to enter this giveaway (make sure you include your EMAIL in your comment!). You can Facebook, Twitter, or blog about it to get additional entries into the drawing! Subscribing to my blog or getting a friend to subscribe to my blog will also add additional entries! Just email me at jillsavagegiveaway (at) yahoo (dot) com to let me know about the extra entries.
For the Day 24 Drawing, I’ll be giving away my Hearts at Home book Professionalizing Motherhood. This book helps moms to see what they do everyday as a profession. Once I thought of it that way, I became a much more intentional mom!
While you are visiting family this week, will you introduce your sister, sister-in-law, or another friend or family member you’ll see to our online conversations? The more moms in our online community here, the better our conversations are!
I look forward to hearing about your Christmas Eve celebration!
We spend Chrismtas Eve with my husband's family and then we attend evening church service. Then we drive to my parents on Christmas day or the day after and celebrate with them. They are two hours away from us. We always have a great time!
We spend Christmas Eve with my husband extended family.
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We are going to the mall just to walk around–shopping's done. Train ride for kids, etc. Then, we'll come home and pack to leave for husband's family tomorrow.
My family will attend the "family friendly" Christmas Eve services at our church, and then come home for pizza, new pj's, and our reading of the Christmas story!
We will finish wrapping all the the presents and cooking our part of the big family Christmas dinner for tomorrow. Then we will read the christmas story and get to open 1 present as a preview for tomorrow.
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During the day, we hang out, play games, watch movies, wrap presents, eat, bake. Since my husband is a pastor, we always have something to do for the service. This year we are in charge of the luminary lights and my son is in charge of the parking lot/door attendants. We always open a gift we receive from our adoptive mom when we were in college. She sends us and the kids something little every year and we open that on Christmas Eve, along with any gifts from those in our congregation. My husband's grandmother was an immigrant from Norway and in the past we have sung Silent Night in Norweigan…we still try everyonce in a while, but none of us know the words real well! And we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and have a candle, etc.
Thanks so much again for all these great topics!!!
Deb
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We share holidays between my family and my husbands also. This year we are with his side. We will meet all of his mom's extended family at Mamaw's tonight.
ehough(at)windstream(dot)net
Christmas Eve varies from year to year….2 of my brothers alternate holidays….this year they were all with us for Thanksgiving. So, our plans this year is to host my parents, grandma and brother to Christmas Eve at our house. We'll exchange gifts, share a meal and then they will come to church with us. I LOVE having my family in church with me. So, today I'm frantically running around trying to clean up and play catch up after having a little sickie baby yesterday. But I'm so excited for everyone to be here!!! Blessings and Love to you and your family. Thank you for the inspiration and motivation that you give to moms all over the world. 🙂
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We usually just relax. Play games, watch a movie and read books. Today we're having my niece and nephew over to play Wii with us.
Deb P.
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Christmas Eve is a guilt-free-laziness-required day! We have always been at my parents house so my kids, my mom and I make monkey bread to eat while opening gifts Christmas morning. We play games of various sorts, take naps (a personal favorite) and sample the aforementioned monkey bread. We attend the church's "penlight" service (as deemed by my 6Year old since they pass out penlights instead of candles) then we come home, read some Christmas stories by the Christmas tree and sleep by the tree. I think we're going to be corney and pull out an air mattress this year 😉
A very blessed Christmas to you, Jill.
Amber
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We attend Christmas Eve mass. Either the children's mass or the Midnight mass. I love attending the Children's mass. Father reads a child's story about the birth of Christ for the homily to help the children understand the importance of Christmas. After mass I always make a special pasta dish. After dinner, my husband reads the Night Before Christmas to our family. My dad got the pleasure of being able to read it last year. We put our daughter to bed then "Santa" comes.
I love Christmas Eve. Such a magical night!. God has done wonderous things.
Forgot to put my email address.
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We make the hour and a half drive to my husband's grandparents' house. We spend the day visiting and cooking. At night, we open presents and read Twas The Night Before Christmas.
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Our Christmas Eve varies from year to year. Sometimes we go to the Christmas Eve service. This year we stayed at home, sang carols as a family, read the story of Jesus's birth and let the kids open one gift. I love Christmas Eve as the house looks so pretty and right now it's so peaceful as the children are nestled in their beds 🙂
We have a light supper at home. Then we go out for a special dessert. We never (well rarely ever) order dessert when we eat out so we pick a special place to go have dessert. Then we go drive around town to look at lights while listening to Christmas music. When we get home we open one gift.
preciousmoments2004 AT gmail DOT com
We make a family recipe of perohi's (many versions of this, often with the added "g"), getting most of the kids and adults involved in rolling out dough, filling with potato/cheese mixture or sauerkraut, boiling and serving with melted butter and sour cream. Light the last advent candle on the wreath, read the scriptures, kids open new jammies and it's off to bed. Each year has new participants, it's so fun to share!
Merry Christmas!
Lisa
bitterroot98 (at) yahoo (dot) com
We have a birthday party for Jesus, complete with birthday cake and everything. Then it is time to open presents after reading the Christmas story together – we watched the story this year (The Nativity). The kids love the tradition and whoever finds the hidden baby Jesus is the first one to open a present. We enjoy opening them one at a time and choosing a gift for the next person to open. I love to see them get excited for eachother that way.
Merry Christmas
~Suzanne
[bryan (dot) suzanne (at) gmail (dot) com]
We went to my husband's dad's house and spent the evening with our girls, his brother, and his mother. We had a fun dinner and opened up presents. I am not sure if this is something we will do every Christmas eve but it was definitely a nice way to spend our first Christmas eve.
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We attend the candlelight service at church in the early evening. Then we usually go to my in-laws' house (they're just across town) and celebrate Christmas with them.
jessicafeuser at hotmail dot com