Christmas bucket list: 40 family ideas, big and small
· By Mitja Ahlin, founder
Most Christmas bucket lists are written for a December with endless free time. Yours probably has two free weekends, a couple of evenings, and kids who are asleep by seven. So this one is sorted by how long things take, not by how festive they sound. Ten-minute ideas count. Plenty of the best things on any Christmas bucket list are small.
Pick a handful, not all forty. A list where everything has to happen is a to-do list, and December has enough of those.
Ten minutes to an hour
- Drive round the streets with the best Christmas lights, kids in pajamas in the back
- Hot chocolate on the doorstep or the balcony, because it's dark at five anyway
- Write a letter to Santa and post it together
- Make paper snowflakes and stick them on the windows
- Wrap a pile of Christmas books on December 1st and unwrap one each night
- Watch one Christmas film under every blanket in the house
- Bake one batch of cookies - just one, not a production line
- Count the decorated windows on one walk around the block
- Leave a small treat out for the delivery driver or the bin collectors
- Light a candle at dinner and have everyone say one good thing from the day
An afternoon
- Visit a Christmas market, with a budget of one treat each
- Make salt-dough ornaments, then paint them the next day
- Go ice skating, even if it's mostly holding on to the wall
- Build a gingerbread house, or a gingerbread ruin - both count
- Wrap presents for each other with a rule: newspaper only, or eyes closed
- Walk somewhere you'd normally drive, and stop for something warm halfway
- Collect pine cones and branches on a winter walk and make a wreath from them
- Thread a garland of popcorn and dried orange slices for the birds
- Take a box of toys or food to a donation drop-off together
- Go to a carol concert where someone else does the singing
A whole day out
- Take a train to a small town just to see its Christmas lights
- Find snow: sledding, one snowman, and home before anyone's too cold
- Walk to a hut or a cafe with a view, and have soup at the top
- Cut your own tree at a tree farm and stay for something warm to drink
- Visit a castle, a museum or an old house dressed up for December
- Look for animal tracks in the frost or snow on an early morning walk
- Spend a day at the grandparents' with a list of questions about their childhood Christmases
- Go back to a place you went in summer and see what it looks like in winter
Worth booking ahead
These sell out or need a date early. If one of them is on your list, it's the one to look at in October or November, not the week before.
- Tickets to a Christmas light trail or a lantern festival
- A Santa visit somewhere small, instead of the long queue at the mall
- A Christmas show or a children's concert
- A ride on a holiday steam train
- A horse-drawn carriage or sleigh ride
- One night in a cabin or a mountain hut
For the slow days after Christmas
- A pajama day with no plans at all
- A long walk on the 26th with whoever's around
- Play every new board game once
- A leftovers picnic on a blanket on the living room floor
- Write down the three best bits of the holidays before they blur together
- Pick one idea from this list you didn't get to, and save it for next year
How to keep a Christmas bucket list from turning into homework
The trouble with a seasonal list is that December is short and busy. The list gets written on the first, everyone's excited, and by the twentieth it's a reminder of what didn't happen. A few things help:
- Mix the sizes. If every idea needs a whole day, none of them fit. The ten-minute ones are what make the list feel used.
- Let everyone add one. Kids pick differently from adults, and a list with their idea on it is a list they ask about.
- Look at it on Friday, not on the first. A whole month of ideas is a lot. One question - is this weekend free, and which of these fits? - is easy.
- Keep the ones you didn't get to. A Christmas idea that didn't happen this year isn't a failure. It's next year's list, already started.
The same approach works for bucket list ideas all year round, and there are more low-effort ones in family activity ideas and family fun ideas that don't need a screen.
