The Advent season has started and soon it will be Christmas once more. Have you planned on how to make these seasons extra special and meaningful for your family? Families need not spend a lot of money to strengthen relationships with family members. We just need to be more intentional and creative so that we can make time to really connect and build stronger relationships even during the busiest seasons of the year.

Let me share with you 25 activities that are simple and budget-friendly. You may choose to do some of them or choose to do all this year. If you want, you can also print these also in small pieces cardboard/cardstock or sheets of paper and make them into an Advent Calendar by putting them in small envelopes or sticking them to a Christmas tree Poster or picture and fold the sheets or cards into two. Just add numbers 1 to 25. The choice is yours. What is important is that whatever you choose to do, that activity or those activities will help you and your children make many beautiful and joyful memories that you would cherish many years from now. You can even choose some activities that will become part of your family traditions.

25 Family Bonding Activities for Advent and Christmas

1. Put up and decorate your Christmas tree.
2. Write a letter to Santa Claus and celebrate St. Nicholas’ Feast Day on December 6.
3. Watch Christmas lights in your neighborhood or watch a Christmas lights show in the city.
4. Get or make an Advent wreath and pray together as you light a candle each Sunday of Advent.
   

   This is a photo of our Advent wreath and the DIY nativity set the kids and I made last year. The baby Jesus was hidden behind the stable because it’s not yet Christmas. =)

5. Make a Christmas craft project with the kids.
6. Read a Christmas book every day of the month of December. We actually do a Christmas countdown using our Christmas books. I wrap our Christmas books. The kids open and read one (1) book each day. Then, we read them again for the rest of the month of December. I wrote about this family tradition here. 
7. Teach your kids Christmas songs and sing with them. You can also go caroling. My eldest child, Yanthy, made his own arrangement of traditional Christmas songs and recorded them in an album. All the songs in his album remind or point people to Jesus, the real reason we have Christmas. He launched it on Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, Apple Music, and many other music platforms. The title of his album is Christmas Hymns for Him.
8. Wrap Christmas presents. Better yet, make your own Christmas wrappers. There was a year when we decorated a manila paper with my kids’ handprints and another year when the kids stamped some images on bond papers. We used these papers to wrap our gifts.
9. Make your own Christmas cards.  Here is a photo of our children showing the Christmas cards that they made.
10. Give the gift of your presence by visiting an elderly relative or family friend.
11. Bake or make sweet treats together.
    

    This photo was taken when we first made chocolate muffins.

12. Help kids purge their toys and clothes and donate to poor children in the streets or donate to an institution like this one.
13. Watch Christmas movies every weekend of December. For our list of recommended movies, click here.
14. Learn about the life of a Saint through a book or video whose Feast day is in December. St. Nicholas, St. Lucy, St. John of the Cross and St. Juan Diego are just some of them. You can find a December Saints word search here.
15. Enjoy hot chocolate with marshmallows and cookies while listening to Christmas music.
    

    This was taken last year during our family vacation. We had hot chocolate and cookies at a coffeeshop near our hotel.

16. Give food to people who live in the streets. This is one of our yearly family traditions. You may read more about this tradition of ours on this post.
17. Have a family photo in front of a Christmas tree.
    

    This was one of our family photos during Christmas eve.

18. Give a gift that you made yourselves or that you helped the kids make.
19. Ask the kids to make their own nativity set using their toys or Lego. 
20. Plan and shop for your Noche Buena and Christmas food together. You can also prepare or cook it together.
21. Go on a Christmas field trip. Some of the places we visited for our field trip during the Christmas season were Casa Santa, the Gingerbread House and the exhibit on the different nativity sets.
    

    This was at the Gingerbread house a couple of years ago. You can read about our field trip and my review of this place  here.

22. Go to Mass/church as a family. Better yet, serve in the Mass. My boys serve in the Children’s Choir of our parish. They get to sing every Sunday of Advent and at least one night during the anticipated Simbang Gabi or Novena Masses in our parish. There was a year when I organized the Simbang Gabi Masses in our community. You can read about it here. Since we moved to our new house, we had been attending Anticipated Simbang Gabi Masses in our parish.
    

    Here is a photo of our eldest son serving as pianist last year in our parish during the Christmas season.

23. Donate some of your used or preloved children’s books to poor children. Or you can also donate brand new books. I started a Christmas book donation drive for my latest children’s book “Pasko Pa Rin.” The main message of this storybook is that even without all the merriment that happens during Christmastime, Christmas remains to be Christmas because it’s mainly about Jesus. It also teaches good Filipino values like giving and sharing even when we do not have a lot. These are messages that the poor need to hear or read the most at this time. We donate copies of this book to poor and indigenous children around the Philippines. You can donate and support this advocacy this Advent and Christmas season as a family. You may read the details here.
24. Write a letter to Jesus to thank Him for the gift of salvation and list the many blessings you received during the year that you want to thank Him for also.
25. Read the story of the birth of Jesus from your Bible.

 

There you have it! With this list, you have at least 25 fun and memorable activities with your family this December!

Let me know in the comments which are your favorites or which ones you already do as a family. I would love to hear from you! Enjoy the season!