instilling traditions as a single parent of an only with no family around

[Anonymous]

how do you do this? i have only one child and it's so hard.
any must do's in your family?

[Anonymous]

Looking at lights, decorating the house, baking,
Gingerbread house building, make a new ornament every year,

[Anonymous]

I'm a single mom, one kid, no family at all around. My best advice to you is to work with what your kid likes. Do they like to bake? Bake! Do they like movies? Have a movie. Do something you can always do together and turn it into a ritual. Are they old enough to decide what they like or tell you? Ask them. Buy matching Christmas socks/blankets, etc.

My kid and I love baking, so we bake cookies and make hot chocolate. We love movies, so we do movie nights. He loves waffles, so I do waffles in the morning, and whatever he wants for lunch (he helps). We go around looking at lights and trees. We put up the tree together, etc. I don't have him on actual Christmas so we do it after.

[Anonymous]

Some typical family traditions: Picking out a tree, decorating the tree and putting lights up, holiday music, baking cookies, caroling with a group, light drives, movies/shows (Christmas Story, Holiday Inn, It's a Wonderful Life, Rudolph), wrapping presents, church service, ice skating, Nutcracker, Breakfast with Santa, mall Santa, reading Night Before Christmas, putting out milk and cookies for Santa, Elf on the Shelf...

Just pick what is doable and special for YOU and your child every year. None of us do it all. And we don't have to.

[Anonymous]

For T-day and Christmas, we plan the menu together and decide what we're going to cook and what we're going to buy (this year, no pumpkin pie - we had Oreo pie instead), get out nice linens, use real dishes (not plastic) and real wine glasses. We also get the tree together and decorate it with ornaments we get from places we've been. We talk about each ornament and remember the trip. We get gingerbread men from Giant (cause I don't have time to bake them) and decorate them for Santa. DS also writes a note for Santa and Santa always writes back. We go to the after Christmas sales and get new, festive tablecloths for next year. This year, I'm thinking of using the Crayola window markers to decorate the wine glasses.

[Anonymous]

Seriously, any holiday thing you could do with a husband and kid, you can do with just the kid. It can be hard to let go of that picket-fence fantasy and accept the reality of holidays as a single mom, though! (I know it was for me.)

Agree with the above posters. my daughter and I decorate the tree (fake these days, to save money), hang up stockings, update the advent calendar daily, do Elf on the Shelf. We build a gingerbread house from a kit. We see the nutcracker and the Christmas carol. We sing christmas songs, drink cocoa, get each other presents. we watch the Xmas movies like Elf and Charlie Brown's Xmas and Rudolph and Frosty. We write the Santa letter, make cookies, etc.

[Anonymous]

Not the OP but similar situation. This thread made me want to cry, in a good way. Thanks for starting this thread, OP, and for posting, everyone. I've bookmarked it.

[Anonymous]

Another single mom. Thanks for this

[Anonymous]

Another single mom. Thanks for this

[Anonymous]

We actually do two advent calendars - a chocolate one and a Lego one. We started today! DD was so excited.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is just starting to understand Christmas at 3.5, but we decorated the tree and turned Christmas music on, and she LOVED it. I have taken her to the mall on Christmas Eve the past couple of years, having done all my shopping. We have lunch together, maybe I buy something extra for her secretly, and just have a relaxing day. We tried going to the movies, but she couldn't quite sit for that long.

I think baking cookies and making gingerbread houses sounds fun.

[Anonymous]

I'm similar to OP to I just want all you single (and lonely) moms to know, you're not really alone.

The joy of a child is that Christmas is special. They don't know otherwise and they are going to love it. I believe my job is love it right alongside them. We decorate a tree and each year pick out an ornament together at a Christmas bazaar or a really festive store (one year we had a great time at Pier One). I label the box or bag so we know which year and where. My son's first choice (2 years old) was a hideous absolutely blingalicious star that probably belongs in a mall-tree. But we hang it every year by golly!

We do an advent calendar, just a paper one where you open a window each night and then we plug in the tree. Some nights I let him eat dinner by candlelight so he can enjoy the tree.

Find some favorite foods and start a special Christmas breakfast or Christmas dinner tradition. My guy doesn't like to cook, but he gets green french toast Christmas morning and pasta primarvera (green and red) for Christmas dinner, because when he was little he basically only ate pasta.

We also go look at Zoo Lights, the Botanical Garden trains and the National Tree. This doesn't have to be expensive, just pick the mildest night of the week and make it a special time by letting your child have a cider or hot cocoa and walking around and letting him stay up late and enjoying the crowd.

My mom died so unexpectedly and I could easily sob my holiday away. But really is taht what our children want from us? I truly think we need to do better than that for them...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm similar to OP to I just want all you single (and lonely) moms to know, you're not really alone.

The joy of a child is that Christmas is special. They don't know otherwise and they are going to love it. I believe my job is love it right alongside them. We decorate a tree and each year pick out an ornament together at a Christmas bazaar or a really festive store (one year we had a great time at Pier One). I label the box or bag so we know which year and where. My son's first choice (2 years old) was a hideous absolutely blingalicious star that probably belongs in a mall-tree. But we hang it every year by golly!

We do an advent calendar, just a paper one where you open a window each night and then we plug in the tree. Some nights I let him eat dinner by candlelight so he can enjoy the tree.

Find some favorite foods and start a special Christmas breakfast or Christmas dinner tradition. My guy doesn't like to cook, but he gets green french toast Christmas morning and pasta primarvera (green and red) for Christmas dinner, because when he was little he basically only ate pasta.

We also go look at Zoo Lights, the Botanical Garden trains and the National Tree. This doesn't have to be expensive, just pick the mildest night of the week and make it a special time by letting your child have a cider or hot cocoa and walking around and letting him stay up late and enjoying the crowd.

My mom died so unexpectedly and I could easily sob my holiday away. But really is taht what our children want from us? I truly think we need to do better than that for them...

Thank you from another single mom!

[Anonymous]

I was an "only" raised by a single mother with no extended family in our lives. We sort of made up our own traditions as we went along... singing Christmas carols on the bus started when I was a toddler, baking a gingerbread house, opening our gifts to each other on Christmas Eve (and later when the Santa myth dispersed all our gifts) in our pajamas, strawberries on pancakes or waffles on Christmas morning, the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in our town, Mass on Christmas morning -- all silly little things that we used to do and did exactly the same every single year. Remembering it now, it was very comforting for me to know what the holidays would bring.

[Anonymous]

Being up in DC there are also so many things you can do for free, too, such as the National Zoo Christmas lights, the national Christmas tree display with train set if I remember. Write ahead one year to go on a tour of the White House as that is special. The Kennedy Center has a Christmas sing along which is reasonable. Look at your area high school to see what high school holiday concerts there may be.

A tradition my daughter has started with her children is to purchase each an ornament for their stocking which sort of reflects in some what their interests or what they have done in the past year and will collect them over time.

Again, any tradition that you enjoy is what is important. Also, I would say to suggest the idea of starting to do something in terms of "giving back" to others is a nice tradition, too. Donate to a local food bank, have your child with you look at old toys or clothes that he has out grown and have him go with you to donate them to a charity. If a bit older,sign up to help out in some way of giving a bit more active during this time of the year or if you have an elderly or sick neighbor together make them a pot of soup and loaf of bread or simply a box of cookies and drop them off. You will help you child to have family members and to also understand the real meaning of the season. My congrats and prayers for all of you single parents trying to do your best at this time of the year.