Recently, my son asked me if I knew what his favorite holiday is. I anticipated it being one of the two holidays my family celebrates in the month of December — Hanukkah or Christmas — as we are an interfaith household…presents galore over here!
But when I asked him what holiday was in fact his favorite, the answer completely caught me off guard. He told me that New Year’s Eve is his favorite. I asked him two more times, certain I had not heard correctly. But his response stayed the same, and when he told me why, I felt all the feelings. Out of all the fun holidays there are — from the ones that involve dressing up, candy, lots of presents and so on — my sweet boy loves New Year’s Eve the most because of a tradition I started with my children about six years ago. (It also might be the fact that it is the only night out of the year he gets to stay up that late!) I ended up borrowing this particular tradition from a friend and tweaked it to make it work for my family. My friend used to post on social media about a New Year’s Eve countdown she did with her own children where they did a different activity every hour up until midnight. I thought it looked like so much fun, so I set out to create my own New Year’s Eve countdown with my family and the rest is history.
Here are some of the activities I have done over the years so you can set up your own New Year’s Eve countdown:
What I love about this simple tradition is that it is so easy and low maintenance to set up and implement. We’re at the end of the month of December where moms have busted our behinds to make the holiday season as perfect as possible for our children. Nobody has the energy or capability, myself included, to do one more thing related to creating magic for our kids. So when I say minimal effort and prep is needed to do a New Year’s Eve countdown, I mean it!
Start by deciding how you want to display your countdown. I use balloons, but I have seen people use small brown paper bags or colorful gift bags. Then, I write down on small slips of paper the activity for that hour and I put it inside the balloon before blowing it up. Make sure you jot down which activity you want for each hour somewhere because the first year I did our countdown, I did not do this and mixed up some activities that I wanted to happen at a specific time — whoops! Then, once I have the papers inside the balloons, I write the hour on the balloon and tape them to my mantle over my fireplace. Start time is totally up to you! I know some people who start as early as 5pm and some people who start at 6pm or even 7pm. It’s whatever works best for your family.
From year to year, many of the activities I set up have changed, while others stay the same. This is because I know it is a fan-favorite and my children specifically ask for these things to be in the rotation. We always — always — start with making our own individual pizzas from scratch. And by scratch, I mean we get the prepared dough and everyone adds their own toppings, sauce, and cheese. Dinner is served! Another staple is an ice cream sundae bar with all the toppings. Then, we end the night with a sleepover in mom and dad’s room and attempt to stay up until midnight!
Here are some other countdown activities we have done over the years:
- Scavenger hunt
- Dance party/freeze dance
- Board games
- Goal writing for the coming year
- Glow bath
- Mocktails, popcorn, and a movie
- Charades
- Minute to Win It games
- New Year’s Eve bingo
- Build a cup tower
These are just some of the ideas that you could incorporate into your own New Year’s Eve activities. The possibilities really are endless and can also be adapted for your children’s needs. As my children have gotten older, I’ve had to make some changes to our activities, such as the glow bath…even though my children wear their bathing suits for this, my preteen daughter just wasn’t into it last year, so she did something else while my son enjoyed his bath with his glow sticks!
Now that I know this is something my children look forward to, I have no plans of letting go of this tradition. Knowing that it’s the little things they remember the most and not all the big, fancy wrapped presents is so humbling and lets me know that I must be doing something right.
