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Since our oldest turned 12 a couple months ago, most of our Christmas traditions have been around for nearly a decade now. We’ve we’ve done our Bethlehem dinner on Christmas Eve for at least that long, and we’ve eaten the same food for our Christmas meals for about the same amount of time. But a family Christmas afternoon tea is newer to us!
But in December of 2020, when most activities away from home were canceled and we all needed a bit of extra fun, we decided to do a fancy afternoon tea. And we loved it!! It was such a fun activity that could take as much or as little effort as we wanted to give it. Here are details of how we do it!
For the past 3 years, we’ve held our Christmas family tea on the Sunday before Christmas. We’re generally dressed up in our Christmas outfits for church, anyway, so it helps it feel a bit fancy and special.
We usually start our tea around 4 or 4:30. There are so many evening activities during December that my kids get pretty tired (and so do I!), so it’s nice to have something start a bit earlier. We usually spend about an hour or so enjoying it all, so it totally counts for an early dinner, and then we clean up and have time for our daily Christmas advent activities or even a movie before bed.
We like to do our Christmas tea a bit later in the afternoon so we can do it after naps and count it for dinner, too (I have no interest in adding an extra meal during this season). So we always have an assortment of savory and sweet things to eat, as well as some fun drinks. Some years, we make more of the items. Other years, we take full advantage of the frozen aisle at Trader Joe’s (another grocery store works fine, too, but TJ’s tends to have quality and special frozen items, like macarons and cream puffs).
Here’s are some of the foods we’ve included in the past:
And here are some of our favorite teas and other drinks with kids:
You can easily do this with your regular dishes and it would be fun and magical. But since we have a few special items, we like pulling them out for our tea. Here’s what we use:
It’s seriously the most fun and simple tradition that we love. It would be perfect for Christmas Eve or even Christmas afternoon if you like to get dressed up then. Please let me know if you add it into your Christmas celebrations this year!
