It’s Christmas Eve! What have my favorite things been this Christmas season? I’d love to tell you my 2024 Christmas favorites. Keep these in your back pocket for next year!
There is something so bittersweet about Christmas Eve. For many people, it’s their favorite day of the whole year. There is just an extra bit of magic in the air on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve can also be tinged with a bit of sadness because the most wonderful time of the year is coming to a close. Whether you’re feeling more bitter or more sweet, it’s a good time to reflect on the Christmas season that you’ve had and your hopes for the new year.
Today, I’m going to focus on the Christmas season I’ve had this year. It’s been full of ups and downs, but it has undeniably been a memorable month or so. In the spirit of sharing Christmas joy and sharing some useful tidbits that you can tuck away for next Christmas season, I’m sharing my 2024 Christmas favorites. I’ve got products, tips, and moments that just can’t be beat. It’s been a wonderful Christmas season this year, and here is why. Strap in, this is a long one.
My 2024 Christmas Favorites
Food & beverage
Food is such a crucial part of the holiday season, so it’s no wonder I have a food and beverage category in my round up of Christmas favorites.
Cookie
Christmas is all about the cookies for me. It’s truly not Christmas without baking, gifting, and eating copious amounts of cookies. If you had a chance to catch my 2024 Holiday Baking List, you know I made a lot of different kinds of cookies, each delicious in its own right. But which cookie reigns supreme among them? For me this year, it’s got to be the chocolate crinkle cookie. There is just something about the intense chocolate flavor and the powdered sugar crust that just scratches that Christmas cookie itch for me. If these weren’t on your baking list this year, I beg you to try them next year. They’re so good and truly deserving of a spot on my Christmas favorites list.
Drink
I am not much of an adventurous drinker. I drink water, coffee, electrolyte beverages, and an occasional beer. I don’t typically see drink recipes (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) and get excited. But when I saw a recipe for a Sleigh Ride Smash on some social media platform earlier this month, my interest was piqued. I just had to try it. It’s bourbon and the festive flavors of orange and cranberry. I’m in!
If you want to make your festive downtime a bit merrier, give it a try. It might just land on your list of Christmas favorites too! The recipe I found and use is as follows:
Sleigh Ride Smash
What you need
2 oz bourbon
1 oz cranberry juice
1 oz orange juice
½ oz simple syrup
4-5 fresh cranberries
2 orange slices
How to make it
Muddle the fresh cranberries and 1 orange slice in the bottom of a cocktail shaker with the simple syrup. Add the bourbon, cranberry juice, and orange juice. Fill the shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnish with the remaining orange slice.
Christmas dinner menu
I’m all about embracing non-traditional Christmas dinner menus this year. I just don’t have it in me to cook a traditional holiday meal for my family that they probably won’t even eat. I want to make Christmas dinner fun! That’s why I’m making homemade pizzas for dinner tomorrow. I asked my husband, kids, and mother-in-law in advance what they would like to have on their pizza so I have everything ready to go to make everyone’s dream Christmas dinner come true. I can already tell that this new way of doing Christmas dinner will be on everyone in my family’s Christmas favorites list. I mean, who doesn’t love pizza?
Gifts
Along with food, gifts are another defining characteristic of the Christmas season. It’s fun to give gifts, make gifts, and receive gifts this time of the year. But what are my favorite gifts this year?
Kid gift
With sincere apologies to my son and his super awesome gift of tickets to a hockey game (which I get to experience with him next month!), I’ve got to say that my daughter’s dollhouse is my favorite kid gift this year. Yes, a day of hockey with my son will be a ton of fun, but I am so excited for years of playing with the dollhouse with both kids. I cannot wait to see their little imaginations run wild. This is a Christmas favorite that I anticipate turning into an all-time favorite.
Gift to myself
Every year, I pick out a gift to myself that I research, order (usually on Black Friday when it’s on mega sale), wrap up and give to myself from my kids. This year, that gift is a stick vacuum. Very sexy, I know. But you have no idea how excited I am for it. It was the star of Mom’s Christmas list this year.
I have two kids and a dog, y’all. The floors in my house are not clean. I’ve been attempting to give them some semblance of clean with an old-school broom and dust pan for years, but I’m getting too old for that nonsense. I can’t wait to be able to just suck up the cheese that my daughter drops from her learning tower perch at the counter or the mouthful of dog food that my dog takes to her “placemat” (also known as the family room rug) at the beginning to every meal to test that I’m not poisoning her.
This is a definite contender for the top of my whole list of Christmas favorites this year, but I’ll need some time with it to make the final call. I’ll report back, you know I will!
Stocking stuffer
I love all of the consumable stocking stuffers I got for my whole family this year, so it was tough to decide what stocking stuffer to put on my 2024 list of Christmas favorites. When I really sat down to think about it, though, one item rose to the top because it’s the only item that I deemed good enough to put in all four stockings. That’s right folks, this stocking stuffer is in my stocking, my husband’s stocking, my son’s stocking, and my daughter’s stocking. What is this magical stocking stuffer? A chocolate orange!
Oranges are traditional stocking stuffers, and even the chocolate orange is something that many families have embraced. If it’s so pedestrian at this point, why did it make my Christmas favorites list? I hit the jackpot this year and found dark chocolate ones! The dark chocolate with the orange flavor just hits different. It takes something delicious and launches it into the stratosphere. My kids and my husband better watch out. Mama might just eat all four of these suckers this year.
Gift helper
Researching, shopping for, wrapping, and presenting gifts can be a full-time job at the holidays. Especially if anything gift-related isn’t in dad’s skill set. That means you need anything and everything that makes this whole process easier. Although I’m come up with a few things over the years to help me with gift-giving at Christmastime, the thing that makes my 2024 Christmas favorites list is a product that can help you too. Let me introduce you to the wrapping organizer!
This bag has made the biggest positive impact in my Christmas gifting this year. It’s a one-stop shop for all my wrapping needs. No more tearing apart the house to find the ribbon or the name tags. No more crushed rolls of wrapping paper. Everything I need is right at my fingertips in this amazing organizer. You need one. It’s worth the money.
Media
Who doesn’t love to amp up Christmas with a multimedia extravaganza on the daily? Christmas just feels that much more Christmassy when you throw in songs, movies, books, and whatever media gives you all the Christmas feels. This was a hard category of Christmas favorites to narrow down, but I’ve tried my best.
Song
I basically have Christmas music on from Black Friday through Christmas Day. It’s what I dance to in the kitchen when I’m making dinner, we listen to it in the car on the way to school, and it’s my background noise when I’m working on this here blog. As you can imagine, a lot of songs come up in all these Christmas music listening sessions.
My favorite Christmas song changes year-to-year. It just depends on my overall Christmas season mood and what my kids are loving. This year, my kids are mildly obsessed with Jingle Bells. Even the little one knows all the words and sings it constantly (in a Southern accent no less!). Because they’re so into Jingle Bells, we have listened to every version of Jingle Bells ever made. The best version of Jingle Bells, hands down, is Frank Sinatra’s. His voice is like velvet, the arrangement is a bit jauntier than the classic carol, and it’s just good, clean fun to listen to. That’s why Frank Sinatra’s Jingle Bells makes my list of 2024 Christmas favorites this year.
Movie
My favorite Christmas song changes year-to-year, but my favorite Christmas movie doesn’t. It’s always White Christmas. Always. I used to watch it with my mom every Christmas. Watching it feels like getting a hug from her, even though most years I don’t get to spend Christmas with her. Plus, Bing Crosby is a king, and Rosemary Clooney is a queen. They just don’t make them like that anymore.
Book
We read a lot of Christmas books to the kids at this time of the year (and all year long, honestly). They have a pretty big collection of Christmas books, and they love them all. It seems like every year they pick one that they want to read over and over and over. This year it’s Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We have read it probably 30 times since Thanksgiving. I can basically recite it from memory at this point, and it’s a pretty long book. It also has a pretty good lesson disguised in a pretty silly story (Dr. Seuss’ specialty), so I don’t mind having it stuck on a loop in my head. It is a book worthy of landing on my list of Christmas favorites.
Traditions
I love Christmas traditions, and I’m always in the market for new ones (or new spins on old ones). Because this category is so large and nebulous, I’m cheating a little and not just picking a favorite tradition. It’s my blog, so I can make up the rules!
Tradition
My favorite overall Christmas tradition is Jesus’ birthday cake. This was my favorite Christmas tradition as a child, then it kind of became background noise. Now that I have kids of my own and this is their favorite Christmas tradition, this has retaken my top spot. I just love the idea of throwing Jesus a birthday party, complete with a delicious birthday cake that we can enjoy for him. If you’re looking for an easy, meaningful Christmas traditions to add to your family’s celebrations, I highly recommend making Jesus’ birthday cake.
New ornament
We have a family tradition of getting a new ornament for our Christmas tree when we go somewhere new. That means that we have really great memories tied up in many of the ornaments that hang on our tree. This year, my favorite new ornament for the tree is not only a great family vacation memory, but also something my kids made themselves.
Our summer vacation this year took us to Rochester, New York. On our way into Rochester, we stopped at Genesee Country Village, which is a living history museum complete with historical buildings, artisans, and fun. One of the activities on offer at the tinsmith is to make your own ornament. My kids chose the snowflake template and hammered away. Now this special handmade ornament gets to hang on our Christmas tree forever and remind us of our summer vacation to Rochester. It’s a Christmas favorite for sure.
Family moment
We have had so many wonderful family moments this Christmas season. My son has been having a rough time at school, so we are really trying to make sure that his Christmas season is merry and bright when he’s at home. The family moment that makes my 2024 Christmas favorites list is a simple one, though.
We started the decorating process a little earlier than usual this year because Thanksgiving was so late. That meant our tree was up the weekend before Thanksgiving (thanks to my sisters-in-law!) and we trimmed the tree one weeknight evening before Thanksgiving. For the first time, both kids were willing and able to help put the ornaments on the tree. I would take an ornament out of the tray, decide whether it was breakable or not and who could hang it on the tree, and then tell the story of how we came to have the ornament. It was such a lovely hour spent all together reliving our family history. A beautiful moment indeed.
Thing I let go of
OK, so this isn’t exactly a tradition, but maybe we should make it one? I’ve really tried to simplify Christmas this year. I’m not saying no one gets gifts or we participate in no festivities, that’s not my goal at all. I just want to focus on family this Christmas (and hopefully all Christmases to come). To help refocus Christmas on family rather than the extraneous stuff that comes with Christmas in the modern world, I let go of some things I had previously done at Christmastime.
The most impactful thing I let go of, and so the thing that makes my Christmas favorites list, is buying presents just to have presents. In previous years, I wanted a mound of presents under the tree and a marathon opening session on Christmas morning. I’ve now learned that the quantity of gifts doesn’t matter, and neither does the length of time we are opening presents. What matters is the togetherness that happens after the presents are unwrapped. So yes, I bought my kids presents this year, but I didn’t go overboard. I’m looking forward to a quiet Christmas morning and a fun day of playing with and loving on my kiddos with pizza, cookies, and Jesus’ birthday cake. It’s going to be a wonderful day, guys.
Other posts
It’s Christmas Eve! Check out this eclectic mix of posts. I hope something here speaks to your heart today:
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Christmas season! Please feel free to share some of your Christmas favorites down in the comments or over on Instagram @sarainseason.
[Note: None of this content is sponsored. The links above may be general affiliate links, which earn me a small commission so I can keep making great content for you!]
Sara, Funny that you mentioned the Jesus’ birthday cake. I told your mother yesterday that one of my fondest memories of past Christmases was coming to visit Mam and Pap and going to your parents’ home for Jesus’ birthday party. Also, my friend has a stick vac and she uses it daily and loves it.