What to Put in a December 1st Box

There ‘s something about December 1st that feels like the official start of Christmas in our house. The decorations might already be up (and if I’m being honest, they started going up at 11:59 PM on October 31st) but December is when all of the little traditions really begin.

One of my favourites is a December 1st box.

Think of it as a little Christmas kickoff box filled with everything you need for a cozy night at home and a few things your kids can enjoy throughout the season. It doesn’t need to be huge or expensive, and it definitely doesn’t need to be packed with a mountain of new stuff. A Christmas book, some festive pajamas, a movie-night treat, or something to do together is more than enough.

If you want to start your own December 1st box tradition, here are some of my favourite things to include.

Something Cozy

Christmas Pajamas: gifting Christmas pajamas on December 1st means they can get an entire months use out of them before Christmas instead of just Christmas eve! Bonus points for matching pajamas for the whole family!

Cozy Christmas Blanket: a fun festive blanket that they can use to decorate their bed or curl up on the couch with is a great addition to a December 1st box.

Christmas Plush: I love adding plushies especially for the littles, however, beware that if you make this a tradition year after year you may be over run with them.

Fun Christmas Slippers:

A Christmas Book

While we do a advent style tradition with 24 Christmas books every December (you can read more about that here) it can still be fun to include some Christmas books for your kiddos to keep! This year I will be including An Anthology of Christmas in our kids December 1st boxes in addition to our 24 Christmas books. Here are some of our other favourites if you’d like to include books for you kids this year:

• Have Yourself a Cheesy Little Christmas: we are big fans of this series by Jory John and Pete Oswald in our house and love that we can include a Christmas edition in our collection.
• How to Catch an Elf: there are a few Christmas themed versions in this “How to Catch” series and they all so fun!
• Moo Baa Fa La La La La: if you have really little little’s you can’t go wrong with Sandra Boynton board books.
• Little Blue Truck’s Christmas: the Little Blue Truck series is another that is a really big hit in our house, you can’t go wrong with this book as a part of your Christmas collection.
• Bear Stays up For Christmas: I look forward to reading this one every year! It’s a really sweet story about friendship.
• Construction Site On Christmas Night: perfect if you have a machine obsessed kiddo like I do!

A Christmas Activity

I like to include several different Christmas activities that we can do together over the holiday season. I get many of mine from the dollar store as well as a few nicer kits from amazon, but you could also DIY some craft kits it you choose. Here are a few of my favourite Amazon options:

• Build a Snowman Kit
• Design Your Own Snow Globes
• Santa’s Amazing Science Workshop Experiments
• Giant Christmas Colouring Page
• Beaded Ornament Craft Kit
• Cardboard Gingerbread House to Colour

Something to Eat or Drink

Christmas is a time full of sweets so I try not to go overboard here with them. But including packets of hot chocolate, fun marshmallows of their favourite characters to put in their hot chocolate, or snacks for a family Christmas movie night are just a few ideas that don’t add a ton of extra sugar.

I also like to include a cute Christmas tumbler that they can use for hot and cold drinks. Perfect for taking hot chocolate with us on holiday outings, or as a water bottle for daily use.

A Little Christmas Magic

Christmas Ornament: I like to include an ornament that relates to something they did or were interested in this year. For example I’m thinking of getting my son a hockey themed ornament this year since this is his first year playing hockey. We also do an a custom ornament every year with the year and all of our names.

Advent Calendars: a December 1st box is the perfect way to gift your kiddos an advent calendar if that’s something you do. I try to stay away from candy or chocolate advent calendars as much as I can, because December is already filled with so many sweets, and try my best to choose one with toys they will actually play with for more than five minutes. Last for my son we did a Bluey advent calendar and he was able to add the toys to his collection of other Bluey toys. We also love the advent calendars where they get a small book to read each day like this Marvel advent we did a few years ago.

For The Whole Family

There are a few items we gift with the December 1st box every year that are for the whole family to share. These are usually items or activities that we can do together throughout the month to spend some quality time together.

Board games: adding a new board game to our collection every December has been a great to grow the collection and we use them all year round. We just choose something that is age appropriate for the kids. Last year we did Candy Land but this Sneaky Squirrel game is another favourite for littles!

Puzzles: A new puzzle is another fun thing to include for the family to do together! They can be Christmas themed to do throughout the season like this Polar Express Puzzle, or not so you can build a collection to enjoy all year!

What’s in Our December 1st Box

Honestly we include almost everything I’ve mentioned here in our December 1st boxes. And while that might sound like a lot, I don’t buy it all every year. I actually reuse a lot of things year over year and typically will buy pajamas, an advent calendar, Christmas activities and a few treats for each person in our family. Items like blankets and tumblers get put away at the end of each of each winter and as long as they are still age appropriate and in good condition I will put them in the December 1st box for the following year. This helps keep not only the cost down, but also prevents us from ending up with either ridiculous collections of Christmas blankets or from running out of ideas for the boxes year after year.

The best part about a December 1st box is that there really aren’t any rules. You can make it as simple or elaborate as you want, change what goes inside as your kids get older, and turn it into a tradition that feels like your family.

That’s the part I love the most. The kids might be excited about the pajamas, books snacks and little surprises now, but years from now, I hope what they remember is the feeling of December 1st, the excitement that Christmas was coming and that we were about to spend another month doing all our favourite things together.

You don’t need a perfectly curated box to make December magical. Sometimes it’s the smallest traditions that end up becoming the ones everyone looks forward to the most.