What traditions are you able to maintain for Christmss, Hanukkah, Kwanza when your kids have grown? And in many cases moved away.
It has become extremely difficult for my family. What about yours?
I still do stockings for my grown kids. Both are single, both live here in town and come over on Christmas. I still get them cool little things and they like that. I tried one year to be practical with the gifts-soap, shaving creme, etc. and they were so shocked I never did it again.
We also do for Christmas Eve what my mother did on Christmas Day-we have pierogi and spaghetti in honor of the two cultures I grew up with. My kids suggested this, since on Christmas we have H’s family over and do a potluck, which THEY grew up with. I get out the nice china and table cloth and we have a Polish/Italian dinner just like we did when they were little. Now my youngest, who never got to even meet my mom, claims it as her tradition as well. When/if they move away and have families of their own, we’ll have to see what happens.
The other tradition we do is that H buys D a “Daddy Dress”. My father got each of the four daughters a dress for each birthday and Christmas, and that’s what we called them. My H and my BIL’s with girls all continued the tradition, even though some never even met Dad.
Some very sweet traditions, sseamom.
We’ve managed to keep most of our traditions, except for the past few years we’ve all been traveling to spend Christmas with our parents, the kids’ grandparents. I just lost my step dad, my in-laws are in their mid-80s – who knows how many more Christmases we’ll have together.
So now we designate whatever day before our flight as our own “Christmas eve:” a nice dinner, then opening stockings & gifts, then all the traditional desserts. Then we go to bed because inevitably we have to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to catch an early flight to the West coast.
No more getting up in the morning with the kids to open presents… but the rest of the stuff we continue to do. The best traditions are the ones that evolve over time anyway.
Short answer is none for traditions , except sending gifts and calling.
When they went away to college and moved away our expections changed.
They have their own lives.
Throughout the year, we will go visit the kids (both coasts), meet them somewhere, or have them come visit us any time. This seems to do just fine for us. This year we are alone and we are volunteering on Christmas.
I do some of the same traditions, but with a different cast of characters. D and I always drove around on Christmas Eve night, looking at lights. Now I take my 92-yr-old mom instead. She loves it.
We have a big Christmas Eve dinner at my sister’s house, with Santa and lots of presents and singing. H makes a fabulous smoked turkey. We have Christmas dinner (we bring mochi rice with mushrooms & Chinese sausage and chicken broth) with family friends that I’ve been close to for the past 4 decades and my kids are close to their kids. It’s noisy and very loving at both events.
I hate how commercialized & perfunctory xmas gift exchanging has become. If my loved ones want/need something, then what’s the point of giving all of it to them on some arbitrary day of the year?
The youngest turned 18, and I abdicated all xmas “duties” beginning this year. It’s so liberating.
I didn’t go get a tree. I didn’t decorate the tree. I didn’t shop and agonize over picking perfect gifts. I didn’t wrap gifts. I have no plans to cook a special xmas meal. No one else in the family bothered to assume those chores.
The world didn’t end.
On another thread, a poster wrote:
“You are absolved of being the coordinator of everything”.
That’s going to be my motto from now on.
It really gets harder and harder. My family used to celecbrate on Xmas Eve, starting at noon. Deaths, divorces, moves of in laws, massive estrangement…it is no more. The kids feel it, we feel it. So this Xmas eve, I invited 3 other families/neighbors that don’t have plans over. We’re all friends, and our kids all grew up and know each other. So now everyone is excited. I hope to start a different tradition, but cannot expect it…as everyone’s lives change from year to year.
I guess we don’t do anything unique anymore. One thing I have kept doing is setting up my wrapping station downstairs, watch holiday movies with a bottle of wine. When the kids were small and I had tons of people to wrap for it would last 4 nights. Now only one night…
Our traditions changed as our kids got older. By the time our kids were teens, Christmas Eve was church, then dinner then opening most of the gifts. Christmas morning we just get up whenever, open the rest of the gifts and the stockings. Lunch is at a Chinese restaurant, then we go to a movie.
This year we are not even sticking to that. My parents and MIL are aging so H, S and I are traveling to the midwest to spend Christmas with them. D and SIL are heading to Florida where his parents live. We will return on the 26th and open gifts/stockings then.
The only real tradition that has “stuck” is the stockings. The kids love that.
For the last 30+ years, my siblings and our kids have celebrated Christmas Eve (and few days before) together. It didn’t matter where we were around the globe. Our kids learned to play poker around age of 5 with their uncle. We would go bowling, movies, eat and drink a lot. We all look forward to it. I am not sure what we would do when my mom is not around in the future. 
My family (extended) goes on one vacation every year. We plan it a year ahead and almost everyone shows up. This year we are going to Asia for 2 weeks.
It is not always convenient for us to get together, but we all make a real effort. Our kids just know they are expected to show up, and it meant their SOs too.
My youngest is still in college, and while everyone else is evolving and our time together is changing, my immediate family acts as though they might not survive if I changed anything. Which is fine.
So: I still put up hand knit stockings for everyone. (The first couple my mom knit, After that she passed on the pattern and I have knit the rest. This year our oldest got married. He wants his stocking to remain at our home rather than take it wih him, and now his new wife wants me to knit a stocking for her, so that is a project for me to attack in the new year.)
I still put up a big tree with all the ornaments we have collected through the years. The kids still look for their favorite ornaments. The other day my college aged daughter had a new boy friend over and she gave him a complete tour of the ornaments. I’m sure he was bored, but kudos to him for smiling and acting interested.
I have pared down on other decorations, but some are non-negotiable. We still put up outdoor lights, but no longer do anything requiring a ladder. We still put everything up the week after Thanksgiving, and keep it up through the new year, mostly because we all love having the decorations up.
We still open presents on Christmas morning, lounge around in jammies, and reluctantly get dressed to either host a dinner or drive 40 minutes to a relative’s house for dinner.
The year is soon approaching when we all won’t be able to get together on Christmas Day, but we aren’t there yet.
This is the first year my daughter (only child) will not be home for an extended time at Christmas (she is successfully launched - living and working in another city). Up until now we have done everything together to prepare for and celebrate the holidays - this year with her limited time we had to decide what we can do together and what to give up.
So the tree will be bought and put up tomorrow when she comes home, baking will happen on Friday, outside decorations went up when she was home for Thanksgiving, and she did not help with wrapping or cards, no gingerbread house is being done this year, and she is not hosting a holiday party for her friends at my house (something we have done every year of her life starting with her baby friends and their parents).
We will have Christmas Eve and Christmas doing our usual but no New Years together (no watching the ball drop or rose parade). I know this all sounds small compared to those who posted about not having Christmas or Christmas Eve with their grown kids, but it is definitely a new stage for us.
We are fortunate to still have most of our traditions intact. And I thank God for every year that we have it - you just never know.
My kids still even leave letters to Santa Claus on the kitchen table with cookies - they are now 28,24 and 19. These letters are the most hilarious works of words you have ever read as they get older! I swear I’m going to put them all in a Snapfish photo book one year.
Our traditions have evolved. The first five years of our marriage we were in Germany and were only in the US for one of them. Then we alternated between the two parents for a while. We had a couple of Christmases with my brother when my parents started having Christmas with them. (But we hated their Christmases so much and the drive with two kids we started inviting our parents to our house.) Every year is a little different - we keep what matters. Family, the tree, stockings, cookies.
Our tradition… we go out in the backyard and cut down a “garbage fir” - a volunteer Douglas fir seedling that we allowed to grow to a decent size. 
Our tree is never pretty for this reason, but it is fresh and free! Kids used to tease us about that but now like it that the tree is “different.”
@BunsenBurner - we did that one year. Things were so busy we couldn’t figure out how we were going to get a majority of the family out to choose a tree - we had a tree in the front yard - the previous owners had planted it in an awkward spot - H got the chainsaw and in it came! The kids will NEVER forget that - it was enormous!
My sister had always spent Christmas Eve night with her mom (when we were kids) and came by on Christmas day so most of our traditions are just for me and my parents (and now Mr R). She still comes over on Christmas. Christmas has ALWAYS been extremely special to my mom and me. It’s the only holiday we care about. We don’t have kids yet but I don’t see why our traditions will change all that much when/if we do since my parents come to us. (We have family Christmas with Mr R’s family a few days after Christmas. It works out well since that is when all the brothers and spouses- and now child!- can get together without conflicts.)
My parents come down around the 23rd and stay with us for a few days. My mom and I put up the ornaments. I’ve left some of the Christmas decorations for her to put up (she left us with most of the Christmas decorations since they majorly downsized and have no storage room).
When I was about 5, my dad got me a custom-made Christmas book that had my name, our dog-at-the-time’s name, our cat-at-the-time’s name, and my sister’s name. I am 25 years old and he still reads it to me every Christmas Eve. It makes him happy.
I make blueberry muffins on Christmas morning.
We do stockings but I never really thought of that as a tradition. I just thought it was something most Christmas-celebrating families did.
Old tradition for the girls was surprise pj’s or nightgowns for xmas eve, something my mother had done for us, until we left home for good. Now they’re less interested. Forever, I’ve bought them discounted packs of movie tix, that still holds. We’re trying to just focus on the together times. Dinner together on Sat eve, they’ill make the brunch on Sunday, something they like to do.
I still like to listen to the Norad reports tracking Santa, after he leaves the North Pole.
Scheduling gets so difficult with adults kids and spouses, especially when they work nights and weekends. S1 & S2 work for the same employer, on flipped schedules, so one of them will always work Christmas and Dil2 is an ER RN.
I let the gingerbread house go, but plan to start again with granddaughter, age 3. I LOVE lights and put up outside ones last year. So disappointed–they aren’t nearly as bright as the older ones. Letting that go due to ladders and it’s miserable here to take them down in January. Do put up a light up pop-up tree, and lights wrapping the light pole. Also stopped the greenery across the huge front porch–again due to taking it down in January.
I have spent all but one year with my parents on Christmas morning. We open gifts here with them and my kids/DILs. I hope we can make this happen until I die–it’s important to me. We eat Christmas afternoon at my mom’s, and sometimes the kids can’t make that due to in-law conflicts. We are lucky all the sets of DIL divorced parents live close-by, of there is no way these logistics would work.
When I was still married to their dad, we’d do much of the same things even when they were 18 and 21 – got the tree, decorated it, set out cookies for Santa, had stockings. Now my ex has all the ornaments (but he doesn’t do a tree) so last year I strung lights around the apartment. Wasn’t the same.
This year, we’ll try to start some new traditions, like a dinner with my fiancé and his children. None of them are too excited about that idea. One constant – they both make up Christmas lists with links to what they want. Ho ho ho…