More Frugal things you can do to celebrate Christmas

1. Make candy. Our favorites are fudge and peanut brittle.
2. Make a Paper Mache snowman.
3. Simmer some hot cider. Or if you’re lazy like me buy it at Trader Joes, or just heat up some bottled cider.
4. Have a birthday party for Jesus. Make a cake, invite the neighborhood kids over, and have a party. For gifts, you could give time or make a commitment to read your Bible, pray…whatever you can think of!
5. Watch the Christmas specials on TV. My personal favorites are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.
6. Send a card with a Christmas postmark to someone special. You can have letters postmarked at the North Pole, Bethlehem, Noel, and many more interesting places.
7. Read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with your family. If you’ve never read it, you should. It’s really funny!
8. Hang mistletoe. Then kiss your sweetie.
9. Make your own Christmas cards. Have everyone pitch in. Family Fun has some good ideas.
10. Write a Christmas letter, with everyone in the family telling their own story of the past year. Our friends do this. They start the letter with “Dad’s Turn” and work their way down to the youngest child’s turn. It’s fun to read everyone’s differing perspective on the past year.
11. Make a video and send it to far away relatives for Christmas. We did this for years. We’d sing songs, tell stories, and just have a good time. Our relatives appreciated seeing how the kids had grown over the year.
12. Make Christmas ornaments.
13. Take a walk and collect pine-cones, acorns and the like for decorations.
14. Make an Advent Calendar. You could make a simple paper calendar. Or if you’re more crafty, you could make something more complicated. There are many options.
15. Make a Jesse Tree.
16. Fix a special Christmas breakfast. I usually make the Land of Nod Cinnamon Buns and Christmas Breakfast Sausage Casserole. I like these recipes, because the bulk of the preparation is done the day before.
17. Hold an open house. Send invites to all your friends, telling them to stop by your house between the hours of two and five. Set out simple finger foods, and enjoy socializing.
18. Take your family’s picture in front of the Christmas tree. Make it a yearly tradition.
19. Send a card to a recovering U.S. Soldier. The soldiers have given so much for us. Help make their holidays a bit brighter by thanking them. The address is: A Recovering American soldier, c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Avenue,NW,Washington,D.C. 20307-5001. Boomeyers, one of my commentators, has informed me that cards addressed to Any Soldier (as opposed to a real na me) will no longer be delivered due to security concerns. So I’m going to amend #48. Send a card to a U.S. soldier that you know. If you don’t know a U.S. soldier, consider making a donation to an organization that supports the troops. Or contact your local National Guard to see how you can help. Thanks, boomeyers, for correcting me.
20. Record your children singing their favorite Christmas carols. Children’s voices change so much over the years. Twenty years from now, you’ll be glad to have the recording.