I think most people will agree that the holiday season, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, is a favorite time of year. I know it’s always been one of my favorites.
For me, it’s a time full of tradition and memories – both from my own childhood and from the traditions and memories we are building with our own kids. There are so many opportunities during this season to foster those traditions.
Our favorite traditions tend to revolve around the kitchen, from baking cookies to homemade pierogi and from-scratch gifts. I love having the kids work with me in the kitchen just as much as I loved to work in the kitchen with my mom. And there is just something so magical about working together in a toasty warm kitchen with Christmas music playing and the lights on the Christmas tree glowing. I wish I could bottle those moments!
This year, Walmart is making it easy to spend as little or as much time in the kitchen as you want while still staying under budget. With Walmart’s Holiday Meals, you can prepare a Christmas Dinner for Eight for as low as $20 or a New Year’s Eve meal for 10 for under $40.
Those Holiday Meals are perfect for entertaining at a reasonable price. Check out Walmart’s Holiday Meals website for a great menu put together by Food Network’s Aaron Sanchez.
To help make your holiday entertaining a little easier, I have two $30 Walmart gift cards to give away.
To enter this giveaway, just leave a comment sharing one of your favorite holiday traditions, memories or foods to eat. This giveaway will end on December 26 at 8:00 p.m. CST and random.org will select the winners for me.
NOTE – THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!
Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Walmart. In addition, I received a Walmart gift certificate to thank me for taking the time to participate and two to offer as a giveaway.
I really enjoy the appetizers we always make for Christmas Eve.
Our favorite Christmas tradition is going to Garvan Woodland Gardens to look at their amazing walk-through Christmas light display. We go every year!
I’ve gotta have my dad’s smoked turkey and mom’s fried rice!!
My favorite Christmas tradition is also cooking in the kitchen with my children. They love to help. This year we expanded our cooking to also include homemade gifts such as play dough and foot scrubs! We had a blast.
It’s lots of good food and reunions!
My favorite traditions tend to focus on the kitchen, too. I get a little frazzled with all of the baking I do, but I do love making those special recipes passed down by my grandma, that only get made around Christmas. Thanks for the lovely giveaway, and happy holidays!
We have lots of holiday traditions. To start off the season, my mom, sister, and I get together and have warm cider and appetizers while we comb through cookbooks to make our Christmas baking list. We do it the day after Thanksgiving and it usually takes all day – our list is usually upwards of 60 or 70 different kinds of cookies, candy, etc. We bake all through December and then give ourselves a “night off”. We go out to dinner as a family, pile into the car and go see CHristmas lights. So much fun!
our favorite tradition actually is the day before thanksgiving and we go to see the city turn on all the light displays in the downtown area it’s a huge planned community event — a huge santa with reindeer, and about 6 large displays altogether — there are business handing out free hot chocolate and cookies so is the salvation army –its a walking tour type thing and we go rain, snow or cold — it is so much fun! and then it ends at the botanical conservatory with seeing santa and real live reindeer – and more hot cocoa, cookies
Every year since I’ve been born we have gone to my aunt’s on Christmas Eve. We always have ham rolls that she doctors up and her famous cheeseballs. Throughout the years she has added some other dishes that quickly became favorites such as “cherries in the snow”.
I can’t wait for tomorrow!
Our family likes to pile up in the car and drive around to look at all the lights.
Our last stop of the evening is to a large church a few towns away that hosts a live nativity with over 200 cast members. It is a wonderful reminder of the true light of the world, Jesus.
<3
ndisilvio@ gmail . com
I have very fond memories of my grandfather showing up bright and early on Christmas morning to watch my brothers and I open our gifts. I think my parents were thankful for the extra set of hands for toy assembly and battery installing. Now that I have a child of my own, my own Dad has suggested he will be dropping by early on Christmas morning.
Christmas Eve church is so special as well – something about hymns, candles, the navitity, a darkened church and little ones in their jammies – teary just thinking about it.
For as long as I can remember, eggnog has been a tradition at my family’s Christmas gathering. A special punch bowl holds the adult version – eggnog with rum, chocolate syrup and whip cream. Delish! Grandma won’t let you drink it until you’re of legal age so it’s a real treat when you finally get to. Until then she serves eggnog straight up to the younger crowd.
We always have Christmas dinner at the in-laws. Then we open presents and let the kids help make sugar cookies. Their favorite part is decorating because they lick frosting and snitch sprinkles along the way. It’s so fun!
Our traditional Christmas candy is pretzels dipped in almond bark. It works because it is so simple and the kids can do it and you get a lot of candy.
One of my favourite traditions is eating all of our favourite finger foods and playing games on Christmas eve.
My favorite memories of Christmas are those spent with family members that are no longer with us, especially my grandfather, mother-in-law and most recently my son. I am so thankful for the great memories we shared.
Roasted chestnuts on the woodstove & sparkling cider are a holiday favorite at our house!
I love, love, love, the annual Christmas Day breakfast! The smells, eating on dishes you only see and use once an year!
This is my first holiday as a mother, I want to start traditions that I had as well as my husbands!
Merry Christmas!!!
I love opening one present on Christmas Eve with my girls…they always get pjs.
We always make some kind of make-ahead breakfast for Christmas morning. This year I’m trying something new, Creme Brulee French Toast. Yummmy!!!
For the past several years we have made stuffed shells or lasagna for Christmas. This year my parents are coming into town and my Dad can’t have a lot of cheese or salt. So, we’re making a turke with the fixings. But, so as not to disappoint my inlaws, who are also coming for Christmas, we are also making stuffed shells. There should be a lot of food to eat this Christmas!
My father in law started coming to our house every Christmas Eve dressed as Santa Claus 3 years ago when my son was born. I love it.
My dad makes the best scrambled eggs once a year on Christmas morning… with bacon mixed in of course… and Wolferman’s English muffins. Sometimes we’ll have icebox gingerbread muffins as well. I look forward to Christmas morning (or mid-morning) breakfast almost as much as finding what Santa had left…
I love my mom’s homemade chocolate pies during the holidays!
The only concrete family tradition that my husband and I have is that I make a breakfast casserole for breakfast Christmas morning. Every year I offer to change it up, but he likes to keep it the same!
My favorite traditon is Christmas Eve lights. I remember as a kid how magical it was to fall asleep looking at lights and wake up in my bed on Christmas morning.
We spend alot of quality time together as a family, we shop and cook together and watch old movies!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
my favorite tradition is opening gifts on Christmas eve
I love the cookies…then about this point in the Christmas season, I”m totally over them! I love my children’s joy in learning about Christmas.
Christmas morning before we open our gifts the kids look through their stockings while my husband and I sip coffee. Their excitement over all the little things I’ve collected through the year always makes me happy. They have all told me they would give up all the gifts just to have stockings!
My favorite memory is going to Dairy Queen and picking a name off a tree of a child who needed Christmas presents. Then my parents would take us to the store and we got to buy that child something for Christmas. I still do it to this day.
My favorite tradition is cinnamon rolls for breakfast.
Every year we make a huge Christmas breakfast, and eat it right after unwrapping gifts! It’s delicious and the perfect start to Christmas Day
My favorite tradition used to be going to Communion at Church on Christmas Eve, but since the church we are members of now doesn’t do that, we have started a new tradition this year of doing Communion on Christmas Eve at home. It is a great way to keep the focus on the REAL meaning of Christmas.
My favorite memories are when out now grown children were home and every Christmas eve we would read Twas the night before Christmas and drink hot chocolate,eat our cookies! We always had such fun. Now Our daughter is passing these traditions along to her sons.
One of my favorite traditions is going caroling to shutins/widows. We just did that tonight and left a loaf of homemade bread with each one. It gives you such a joyful feeling knowing you spread some Christmas cheer!
We have an Italian dinner of Christmas Day. It is a nice dinner with courses. Each course we ask a different question and share our thoughts on it. My children each take a turn hosting the course and the question. We also draw chores for the Christmas Dinner as I divide up the duties. It is so fun to watch different ones serve or wash or fill glasses. I love this time of year!
My favorite dish for a holiday meal is green bean casserole
*Thanks* for the giveaway!
My favorite holiday tradition started this year, making homemade cinnamon rolls for the family for Christmas. This year was my first year attempting it and I plan on continuing it every year!!
We always have lasagna for dinner on Christmas- my favorite!
My favourite is sitting by the Christmas tree drinking hot chocolate – my husband and I always make sure we find time to do that a few times over the holidays!
My favorite holiday food is Christmas sugar cookies.
Christmas morning I make homemade cinnamon rolls, cheesy strata and I cut up some fruit to remind me to be a little good to myself. I don’t count calories or fat grams.
We always head to church for the Christmas Eve service then home for a holiday meal. The kids open one gift- pajamas- before heading to bed.
Every Christmas Eve we go to a local wildlife refuge to walk a trail and enjoy the scenery. It is a wonderful time to appreciate the world outside, which is still mild and not too cold here in Mississippi!
Every year my husband and I watch the Muppet Christmas Carol together. We’re both so busy with work and things that it’s nice to sit down and spend some time together laughing and remembering what the season is about.
My favorite holiday tradition is opening one present on Christmas evening with my siblings. It’s just as fun now as it was when we were kids.
Every Christmas eve we pick out a cookie recipe to make cookies for Santa and then before we go to bed we eat Tamales, and Toutiere pie followed by a Christmas Ham dinner the next day!
micaela6955 at msn dot com
I few years ago, my husband got me the supplies for making Lefse, a traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread. My son peeled the potatoes for me tonight, and we’re all looking forward to enjoying the tortilla-like lefse hot off the griddle tomorrow!
Beth at Mother by Design dot com
One of my fondest memories growing up was opening one gift on Christmas Eve. It was always the same thing – homemade pajamas from my Mom. Then on Christmas morning, all 5 of us kids would go downstairs in our new pajamas to open our gifts.