40 Christmas Activities Your Family Will Actually Enjoy

I love Christmas and every year I look forward to celebrating the holidays with family and friends. It’s such a magical time of year. I can’t get enough of all the holiday cheer and positive energy in the atmosphere. I often joke that I wish I could bottle up Christmas and carry it around with me all year.

Since that’s not possible, I do my best to enjoy all the days leading up to Christmas.

Today I’m going to share with you a few fun Christmas activities that my family and I would like to do as part of our pre-Christmas celebrations this year.

How are we are going to do this many activities in less than a month? We’re not! As much as I would like to do everything on this list, there simply isn’t enough time to do it all! Instead, we narrowed our Christmas activities list down by having each family member choose a few Christmas activities they would like to do.

After they chose their Christmas activities, I wrote the activity on a card and placed the cards in a jar. Each day we pick a card and do whatever activity is on the card. Easy peasy!

I’ve included a free printable of Christmas activities on this list for you to download. Check out the sample below. Hope you enjoy and happy holidays!

Family Together Time

• Cut or choose a Christmas tree
• Have an ugly sweater competition
• Make a holiday greeting video and send it to friends and family
• Go on a Christmas themed scavenger hunt
• Have a Christmas movie marathon
• Make a Christmas song playlist and have a family dance party
• Take family photos with Santa
• Have a silly, Christmas- themed family photo shoot
• Take a ride to look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood
• Attend your community’s tree lighting event
• Go to a Christmas show
• Go on a sleigh ride
• Read stories together by the Christmas tree
• Plan a red and green day (i.e. wear red and green all day or eat only red and green foods)
• Game night with hot cocoa and candy canes

Christmas Cheer in the Kitchen

• Have a hot cocoa bar
• Have a cookie decorating party
• Make Christmas cookies
• Make reindeer treats
• Decorate a Gingerbread house

Christmas Acts of Kindness

• Adopt a family for the holidays
• Donate new toy to charity
• Visit a nursing home and sing Christmas carols
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen
• Donate towels and blankets to an animal shelter
• Donate canned goods to a food pantry
• Leave a ‘thank you’ note for your mail carrier
• Send care packages or holiday cards to troops overseas

Christmas Crafts for Kids

• Make Christmas tree ornaments
• Decorate a wreath
• Make your own ugly sweater
• Design Christmas cards
• Make mason jar snow globes
• Design and decorate gift tags
• Make paper snowflakes
• Write a letter to Santa

Christmas Decorating Fun

• Decorate the Christmas tree
• Hang Christmas lights outdoors
• Deck the halls with Christmas decoration
• String popcorn garland and put on Christmas tree