Family traditions are the glue that holds special memories together, creating moments of joy and bonding that children and parents cherish for years to come. Whether they’re tied to holidays, seasons, or everyday life, traditions help create a sense of belonging and fun within a family. Here are some ideas for family traditions, including both low-cost and splurge-worthy options, to make your family home a place of celebration all year round.
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- Christmas Traditions
- Easter Traditions
- New Year’s Traditions
- Valentine’s Day Traditions
- Seasonal Traditions
- Everyday Traditions
- Lesser-Known Celebrations
- Traditions for Parents
- Holiday Traditions
- Birthday Traditions
1. Christmas Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- DIY Ornament Making: Each year, make handmade ornaments with your kids using materials like salt dough, paper, or craft kits. Write the year on each ornament to create a collection that grows over time. Have a look at some ornaments we made here: Making Decorative Christmas Baubles with Toddlers – Fun Family Home
- December 1st Box: Fill with goodies to use all throughout December. Ideas are Christmas pyjamas (matching ones, if you like!), Christmas baking sets, crafts and DVDs.
- Visiting Elf: Whether you invite a naughty elf into your home who gets up to all sorts of mischief or a kind elf, like ours who brings gifts and ideas for acts of kindness, the elf could be a great tradition for your family.
- Christmas Eve Box: Fill a small box with a cosy treat like hot chocolate sachets, a pair of festive socks, and a favourite family Christmas movie to watch together.
- Neighbourhood Light Tour: Take a walk or drive around your neighbourhood to admire the Christmas lights. Let the kids pick their favourite displays.
Paid Ideas:
- Santa Visit or Experience: Book a visit with Santa or attend a local Christmas fair with festive activities. We have been on a few Santa train experiences over the past six years and if you search in local groups online, you’ll find a whole host of recommendations for different experiences such as farm visits, safari park visits, visits at stately homes, or visits at a local tea room.
- Advent Calendars with Activities: Instead of chocolates, create an advent calendar where each day reveals a fun family activity like baking cookies, crafting, or reading a Christmas story together. We also like to add little acts of kindness in there such as “Give flowers to a friend or teacher.”
2. Easter Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Egg Decorating: Use food dye or natural materials to colour hard-boiled eggs, or craft paper eggs for a mess-free version. Here’s one of our attempts at Easter egg decorating: How To Decorate Eggs for School – Fun Family Home
- Easter Treasure Hunt: Create a simple treasure hunt around the house or garden with clues leading to small surprises like stickers or homemade treats. These Easter egg tokens make a great addition to an Easter egg hunt as you can personalise them and hide them by themselves or inside those little plastic eggs.
- Spring Nature Walk: Take a family stroll to spot signs of spring—flowers blooming, baby animals, or new leaves on trees.
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Paid Ideas:
- Easter Brunch: Host a special family meal with themed dishes like bunny-shaped pancakes or carrot cake.
- Farm Visit: Many farms offer Easter-themed events with egg hunts, lamb feeding, and tractor rides.
3. New Year’s Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Family Resolutions Jar: Have everyone write their resolutions or goals for the year ahead and place them in a jar. Revisit them at the end of the year to see what you’ve achieved.
- Celebration Countdown: Create a fun, kid-friendly countdown to midnight with activities every hour leading up to bedtime. Activities could include playing a game, making a craft, or dancing to a favourite song.
- DIY Party Hats: Make your own New Year’s hats or crowns using paper, glitter, and glue for a festive feel.
- Camp in the Lounge: Make it an annual thing where you all sleep together under the sparkly Christmas light (if they’re still up!)
Paid Ideas:
- Family Photoshoot: Start the year by taking a family photo that you can frame or add to an album of annual traditions.
- Staycation Celebration: Book a night in a local hotel or holiday cottage to make the celebration extra special.
Check out this guide all about New Year’s Eve with kids: How Should I Celebrate New Year’s Eve with my Child? – Fun Family Home
4. Valentine’s Day Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Love Notes: Write small notes of appreciation for each family member and hide them around the house for them to find throughout the day.
- Heart-Themed Crafts: Spend time making Valentine’s cards for family and friends or heart-shaped decorations to hang around the house. Why not take a look at some Valentine’s craft activities here: Valentine’s Day Themed Activities For Preschoolers – Fun Family Home
- Family Movie Night: Watch a heartwarming film together with snacks like heart-shaped cookies or popcorn (for over 5’s).
- Family Baking Day: Bake and decorate Valentine’s-themed cupcakes or cookies together.
Paid Ideas:
- A Family Dinner Out: Choose a child-friendly restaurant and enjoy a special meal out together.
- Buy all the family including the kids presents: This one can be super costly but equally you could pop into somewhere like Poundland and get some cute little gifts for everyone there.
5. Seasonal Traditions
Spring
- Plant Something Together: Start a family garden with flowers, vegetables, or herbs. Watching the plants grow will be an ongoing source of fun. We love to plant sunflowers and do it nearly every year. I think a great tradition is planting giant sunflowers and seeing whose grows the tallest.
- Picnic Adventures: Pack a simple picnic and explore a local park or nature reserve. We have a river about an hour from us where there is the perfect place to picnic with a playground and a fish & chip shop on the other side.
Summer
- Ice Cream Fridays: Make it a weekly summer tradition to try a new ice cream flavour or visit a local shop.
- Outdoor Movie Night: Set up a projector or use a laptop to watch movies outside with blankets and snacks. The best ideas I’ve seen are where the family wear cordless headphones so you don’t disturb the neighbours. These are some cute kids wireless headphones over on Amazon.
- Playground Fridays: While the weather is good (hopefully!), make it a tradition to go to the park every Friday straight after school. Invite classmates or friends to meet you there or just go as a family. The kids will love this one.
- Bike rides or scooter rides: Go to a park a bit further away, take a picnic and make a day of it.
Autumn
- Pumpkin Picking and Carving: Visit a pumpkin patch to choose the perfect pumpkin, then carve them together at home. We love going to pumpkin patch purely to take some cute photos. The girls dress in Halloween-y clothes for this free photo shoot.
- Leaf Art: Collect fallen leaves to make collages, paintings, or bookmarks.
Winter
- Hot Chocolate Station: Set up a DIY hot chocolate bar with marshmallows, sprinkles, and whipped cream. Top tip: I‘ve whipped double cream up in the past, put large dollops onto greaseproof paper and then into a tub and frozen it. It means we don’t waste any cream and it melts slowly on the hot chocolate for a great creamy flavour.
- Winter Wildlife Walk: Feed ducks at a local pond or leave birdseed outside for feathered visitors.
6. Everyday Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Family Games Night: Choose a night each week to play board games or card games together. This guide will help you pick some suitable for your family: Beginner’s Guide to Card Games for Toddlers and Preschoolers – Fun Family Home
- Dinner Table Questions: Go around the table and have each person share their favourite part of the day or something they’re thankful for. Our daughter has a gratitude journal which we fill in together at the dinner table. When she was 3, she would draw and squiggle in there. She’d tell us what she was grateful for that day and we’d write a sentence in there. Now that she’s 5, she can write her own words and sentences in as well as draw pictures.
- Reading Ritual: End each day or a certain day a week by reading a chapter of a book together as a family. We started reading The Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton when my daughter was 4. It is a chapter book so she couldn’t read it herself but she loved hearing the stories about what the children got up to each night and for Christmas, she received The Adventures of the Wishing Chair collection of Yoto cards for her Yoto Mini and has been listing to a chapter a night on there. She loves them.
- Cooking Together: Teach your kids to cook by letting them help prepare a favourite family recipe.
- Visit the library: Make this a regular thing. Perhaps every Saturday morning or once a month.
Paid Ideas:
- Monthly Outing: Plan a family outing once a month, like a visit to a museum, the zoo, or a trampoline park. We have National Trust membership and we love visiting different stately homes together as a family. (National Trust have started regularly releasing free tickets at various times of the year so keep an eye out on social media for those as they go quickly. If you do want a membership, I advise applying through TopCashback as at the time of writing, they give 5% cashback for new memberships.) For more money-saving tips, see this post: How Can I Save Money As a New Mum? – Fun Family Home
7. Lesser-Known Celebrations
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday): Let everyone in the family create their own pancake masterpiece with toppings like fruits, syrups, and chocolate.
- May Day: Celebrate spring by making flower crowns or dancing around a maypole.
- Bonfire Night (UK): If you’re in the UK, enjoy sparklers at home or fireworks at a local display.
- First Day of School: Take a photo of your little one outside the front door on the first day of school each year and see how they grow year-on-year.
- International Days: Pick an international holiday like Chinese New Year or Diwali and celebrate by learning about the culture, cooking traditional foods, or making crafts. Some cities also have celebration days in the city centre, go along and join in the fun.
8. Traditions for Parents
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Date Nights In: Once the kids are in bed, have a date night at home with a film, board game, or takeaway. Take a look at this post all about date ideas for parents: 37 Actually Fun Date Night Ideas for Parents of Young Children – Fun Family Home
- Parent Check-Ins: Set aside time each week to talk about the family, plans, or just life in general.
Paid Ideas:
- Overnight Getaway: Book an occasional night away for just the two of you to recharge and reconnect.
9. Holiday Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Take a photo of the family all together each time: This will be something you cherish in years to come.
Paid Ideas:
- Buy a souvenir of your holiday: We went to Paris last year and bought a Christmas bauble for our tree and every year we can now think back to our first abroad family holiday as we put it on the Christmas tree. We also bought a snow globe, but we won’t talk about that as that was damaged within a month!
- Pre-Holiday Takeaway: Make it a tradition that the night before you go on holiday, that you order food in to take the stress out of packing and the kids get a treat to start the holiday off.
10. Birthday Traditions
Low-Cost Ideas:
- Pick a cake from the supermarket or make your own and decorate it with something the birthday child likes such as princesses or diggers.
- Sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and invite your little one to blow the candles out on their birthday cake.
- Make a birthday card for the birthday child – use craft bits and bobs you have lying around.
- Print out photos of the birthday child through the years and stick them up in the house.
- Write things you love about the birthday child onto post-it notes or a poster on their door.
Paid Ideas:
- Get siblings to buy their birthday sibling a present – Make it a tradition to go shopping with them before the birthday so they can pick something out that they think their sibling would like.
- Host a party for family and friends – This can be as big or as little as you want it to be. It could be hosting a class party at a soft play or inviting a few select friends round for a pamper party. It can be whatever your child is happy with and your budget can afford.
- Have the birthday child choose dinner
- Go out for a day trip to somewhere the birthday child would enjoy – ideas are soft play, farm, zoo, outdoor playground, a park or a trip on a bus to a museum.
Why Traditions Matter
Family traditions, whether big or small, bring joy, strengthen bonds, and create memories that last a lifetime. They provide a sense of stability for children and can even become something they pass down to their own families.
Start with a few simple ideas and build on them over time—you don’t need to do everything at once!
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