Fifty-some Christmases in, I can tell you that nobody in our family remembers most of the gifts. They remember the Titanic made of gingerbread. They remember that the murderer was Chloe. Again. Traditions are how a family remembers it is a family.
The ones you start now are the ones you keep
Your First Christmas Together: 12 Holiday Traditions to Start as a Couple
Your first Christmas together is a funny thing. You each walk into it carrying a whole box of traditions from the family you grew up in. Who opens gifts on Christmas Eve and who waits for morning. Whose mother makes the turkey and whose makes ham. Whether the tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving or the week before Christmas.
Now there are two boxes, and only one living room.
Shannon and I have had more than fifty Christmases together. Here is what I have learned: the traditions that last are not the big ones. They are small, a little silly, easy to repeat, and they belong to the two of you. Most of them started as “let’s try this” and just never stopped.
In this guide
First, blend the two families you came from
Before you start anything new, sit down with a cup of something warm and talk about what Christmas looked like growing up. Every couple I have married has been surprised by something in that conversation.
- Each of you name one tradition you can’t live without. Keep both. That’s the easy part.
- Name the ones you can let go. You may find your partner never liked the thing their family always did, either.
- Decide where you’ll be, and when. Christmas Eve with one family and Christmas Day with the other, or trade years. Settle it early and tell both families at the same time.
- Leave room for one thing that’s only yours. Even if you spend the whole holiday at somebody’s parents’ house, keep an hour that belongs to just the two of you.
Sorting out the gift list too? Read Your First Christmas Together: Who Do We Buy For?
12 traditions to start this year
You don’t need all twelve. Pick two or three that sound like you and see which ones you’re still doing in ten years.
1. Buy your first ornament together
Go shopping for it together, or give it to each other. Write the year on the back. In twenty years you will have a tree that tells your whole story, one ornament at a time. Some couples add one ornament each year that stands for something that happened that year: a new home, a trip, a dog.
One of the first ornaments I bought Shannon after we married still goes on our tree every year: a golden bow with crystals hanging from it. The crystal bird I picked out because Shannon loves birds. I always know where to find them on the tree, because she puts them front and center, in plain view. When they come out of the box each December, so do the stories.
If you’re going to keep it for fifty years, buy a good one. Skip the flat printed discs. Look for glass that was blown by hand, by a real glassblower, so no two are exactly alike. Here are a few I would hang on our own tree:
- A white iridescent glass heart, made by two sisters in Arizona. It shimmers like a wedding dress.
- A cream and white ornament or a soft pale pink one, each made by one artist in the Ozark Mountains.
- “Christmas Crystal” and “Pearlescent Gold”, from a small glass studio in Portland, Oregon.
- A white ornament with fine glass threads that catch the tree lights.
- A clear glass ball painted with blush pink blossoms, mouth-blown in Europe the old way.
- A set of sparkling clear glass raindrops to hang among the branches, or a warmer champagne gold set. On a white tree they look like ice.
Handmade glass can’t be engraved, so tie a small tag to the hook with your names and the year. I think that’s more charming anyway.
2. A gingerbread house contest
This one comes from our own family, and it’s the most fun we have all season. More on it below. Even if it’s only the two of you, buy two kits, set a timer, and let a friend or your family pick the winner.
3. A mystery night
Another one from our family. Dress the part, play a mystery game, and let everybody accuse everybody. It works for two couples or twenty people. See our family murder mysteries below, and the granddaughter nobody can catch.
4. Christmas Eve letters
On Christmas Eve, each of you writes the other a letter about the year: what you’re thankful for, what surprised you, what you hope for next year. Seal them and open them the next Christmas Eve, then write new ones. Keep them all in one box. That box will be worth more than anything under the tree.
A plain shoebox works fine. If you’d like one that looks like it belongs on a shelf for the next fifty years, a wooden keepsake box is a good place to start. Write the year on each envelope.
Not sure where to start? See how to write a love letter.
5. A lights drive with cocoa
Fill two travel mugs with hot chocolate, put on the Christmas music, and drive around looking at lights. Rank the best house on the way home. It costs almost nothing, which matters in a first year when money can be tight.
6. One dish from each family
Ask both mothers, or grandmothers, for one recipe that tastes like Christmas to each of you, and make them together. Write the recipes down on cards in the cook’s own words. Someday you’ll be glad you did.
Loose cards get lost. A family recipe book to write in keeps them together, and every Christmas you add one more.
7. A Christmas Eve box
A box opened on Christmas Eve with new pajamas, a holiday movie, popcorn and cocoa. It’s a quiet night in before the busy day, and it becomes the night you look forward to most.
The pajamas are the heart of it. Burt’s Bees matching holiday pajamas are soft organic cotton and come in sizes for the two of you now, and for anyone who comes along later. For the box itself, a wooden Christmas Eve box can be used year after year.
8. The same photo, every year
Take a picture of the two of you in the same spot every Christmas: by the tree, on the front step, in the same chairs. Put them side by side after ten years. You will laugh, and you may cry a little.
Keep them together in one Christmas photo album, or put this year’s in a “then and now” frame beside your wedding picture.
9. Give something away together
Pick one way to give as a couple: an angel tree tag, a family in need, a meal served at a shelter, a gift for a child who wouldn’t otherwise get one. It reminds you that your new home is meant to bless more than the two of you.
10. A candlelight service, or a quiet walk
For many couples, Christmas Eve means a candlelight service at church. For others it’s a walk in the cold under the stars. Either way, find one hour that is still and quiet in the middle of all the noise.
11. A dress-up party
Even without a mystery to solve, costumes change a party. For Christmas, ask everyone to come as a character from a holiday movie, or in their best ugly sweater. People who barely know each other end up laughing together, and for a new couple bringing two families together, that is worth a great deal.
12. A year-end memory jar
Through the year, drop a note in a jar whenever something good happens. On New Year’s Eve, read them out loud together. It’s the best way I know to end your first year and start the next.
Any jar from the kitchen will do. If you want one that comes with the little notes ready to fill, look for a memory jar with notes.
Two from our own family
Our family is big now: children, their partners, grandchildren and their sweethearts. These are the traditions they look forward to. None of them started out as a tradition. They just worked, so we did them again.
The gingerbread house contest
Every Christmas now, our family holds a gingerbread house decorating contest. Each finished house gets a letter and a name, our daughter posts the photos on Facebook, and friends vote for their favorite. There’s a prize on the line. It gets competitive. Nobody admits that, but it does.
The year of our second contest, everyone was free to design their own house, not just decorate a kit. Here are the names that went up for the vote that year, just as they were posted:
A. TreeporiumB. GingyC. Pasta CasaD. DrippyE. Sugar RanchF. Wheatie InnG. Fluffy Sugar ShackH. Frasier’s ApartmentI. A Boy and His Dog TreehouseJ. Nightmare Before ChristmasK. Death By SugarL. Mount Krumpet
The names are half the fun. “Death By Sugar” was exactly what it sounds like.
Then the votes came in. Friends, neighbors, and the children of friends, who all insisted on voting too. When I counted them up, it was a dead heat: nine votes for the Treeporium and nine for the Sugar Ranch. A treehouse and a barn, neck and neck. Even the gingerbread in our family doesn’t like to lose.
Why does it work so well? Everybody can play, from the youngest grandchild to the oldest of us. Nobody has to be good at it. And the voting keeps the fun going for days after the icing has dried. One year a grandchild built the sinking Titanic, and the whole family still talks about it. That story is in our Christmas engagement announcement ideas, along with how to turn a gingerbread house into an engagement reveal.
To start your own: buy small gingerbread house kits, put out extra candy and icing, give every house a letter, and post the photos for voting. Make up your own categories. The sillier, the better.
Our family murder mysteries
Our daughter is the planner in our family. A while back she organized a Roaring ’20s Clue night, a murder mystery where everyone had a character and everyone was a suspect. The costumes were amazing, every one of them straight out of the 1920s.
The flappers, and the two of us. Shannon wore the pearls. I wore the suspenders.
The murderer turned out to be our granddaughter Chloe. She was about twelve. She kept a straight face the whole night, and not one of us suspected her.
The next one was at Christmas. Oh my goodness. Surprise to us all, it was Chloe again, at about thirteen.
This past Halloween the whole family, all sixteen of us, were together in Cabo, and our daughter arranged a Halloween murder mystery. We all dressed in costumes to fit the story. When it came time to vote, I thought, no, not three times in a row. But as a joke, I voted for Chloe.
Yes, she was the murderer again. Now we need to play the lottery. She pulls it off every time, with a straight face and her cards held tight to her chest.
Three mysteries, three murders, one granddaughter. Nobody has caught her yet.
A mystery night is a wonderful party for a couple’s first Christmas. It breaks the ice between two families who don’t know each other well yet, because nobody is being themselves. Your new brother-in-law is a gangster. Your mother-in-law is a silent film star. By the end of the night, they have all laughed together. And somebody, every year, will swear they knew it all along.
To start your own: you can buy a ready-made 1920s murder mystery party game with characters, clues and scripts, or a Christmas murder mystery game, so nobody has to write anything. Hand out the characters a week or two ahead so people can find a costume. And if there’s a quiet twelve-year-old at the table, keep an eye on her.
How to make a tradition stick
- Keep it small. If it takes a week of planning, it won’t survive the year you have a new baby or a new job.
- Keep it cheap. Your first years may be lean. The best traditions cost little or nothing.
- Write it down. Keep a little Christmas notebook: what you did, who came, what you ate. You’ll love reading it later.
- Take the photo. Every year. Even when you don’t feel like it.
- Let it change. A tradition is supposed to serve your family, not the other way around. If one stops being fun, let it go and start another.
First Christmas questions
What are good traditions for a couple’s first Christmas?
Start small: buy your first ornament together, write each other a Christmas Eve letter, and take a photo in the same spot. Add one fun tradition, like a gingerbread house contest or a lights drive with cocoa, and see what sticks.
How do we split Christmas between two families?
Talk about it early and decide together. Many couples spend Christmas Eve with one family and Christmas Day with the other, or trade years. Whatever you choose, tell both families at the same time, and let each of you explain the plan to your own family.
Should we spend our first Christmas alone together?
Some couples do, and love it. Others can’t imagine Christmas without family. A good middle ground is to spend the holiday with family but keep Christmas Eve or Christmas morning just for the two of you.
What do we do if our family traditions clash?
Keep the one that matters most to each of you, let go of the rest, and start one that is new to both of you. That one belongs to neither family. It belongs to yours.
Shopping for a newly engaged couple? See 20 Christmas gifts for engaged couples. Engaged this season? Read how to share the news at Christmas or plan a Christmas engagement party. Just married? Our marriage advice for newlyweds is plain talk from a couple still going strong.
From our family to yours: merry Christmas, and welcome to the start of your own traditions.
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See everything for a Christmas engagement, from the proposal to your first Christmas together, on one page.