Last year December came without me having done any kind of Christmas preparations, and on the evening of the 30th November I realized that I had only a few hours to prepare some kind of simple Christmas calendar. So instead of going for the traditional 24 small packages I went for this. A Little Tree of Great Moments. And even though there were no presents to open up, the girls ended up loving it.

The concept is simple. Each morning the girls will find and read the tag of that day, and on the back of the tag there will be an activity written that we’ll do together that day. All it takes to prepare is a few branches,  24 hang tags (according to Danish traditions we celebrate Christmas on the evening of the 24th), a black marker and some imagination. I would often write the activity of the day the night before, which would leave plenty of flexibility to come up with things that would fit into our program and my mood. No doubt that we’ill do the same again this year. Maybe the design will be a bit different, but I loved how this simple christmas calendar of great moments made us have a month full of great times together instead of only being about shopping and gifting.

Here are some of the activities we did for our very simple christmas calendar:

Paper snowflakes for the windows.

Pancakes for dinner.

Paint a painting for a family member Christmas present.

Go buy a Christmas tree.

Go to the cinema.

Go watch the Christmas windows in town.

Family outing for a nearby tree lighting.

Decorating the tree.

Christmas cookie baking.

Shopping for daddy’s present.

Afternoon hot chocolate at our favorite café.

Before school croissants.