December 25 is over for 2025, but Christmas Day is just the beginning of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Growing up, I thought the Twelve Days ended on Dec. 25. As an adult, I have learned that Dec. 25 is actually the start of it. Watch the videos below to learn the history of these days.

I love Leila Marie Lawler’s ideas over here, on the blog likemotherlikedaughter.org, about celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas as a family. The following list is what she suggests on how to celebrate the Twelve Days, but of course, you as the mom and dad are in charge of your family. I certainly trust you to be flexible and do what fits your family the best. These are just suggestions, not commandments. The purpose of celebrating these Twelve Days is to spread out the Christmas festivities with wholesome recreation for your family, connecting your family to each other while celebrating the birth of the Christ child. This spreads Christmas out to be a big season into January, not just the Advent days in December.

Day 1: Christmas Day, which is over this year. I hope you all had a relaxing and merry Christmas Day with the perfect balance of relaxing and merry, which can be hard to find, I admit. It was a certainly merry day for me to the point of being overstimulating. Anyway, it’s over! Another day I’ll blog a debrief of Christmas Day like I have for other years, such as over here. So moving on…

Day 2: We usually play board games on this day, Boxing Day, December 26 and eat leftovers from Christmas Eve and Day dinners. Ms. Lawler suggests on this day for the family to make gingerbread houses. That’s never going to happen here. After the Tetris marathon of prepping for and orchestrating Christmas Day, there’s no way I’m doing gingerbread houses the next day! I like the idea of boxing up stuff to give away to make more room for all the new toys and clothes given as presents the previous day, but alas, I have never actually felt that ambitious and energetic the day after Christmas.

Day 3: She suggests the family open up a whole-family present that everyone can enjoy for the day, like a board game. Or it might be an addition to a set of family toys to revive interest in an old family favorite, such as Brio railroad cars and tracks, Calico Critters, Legos, or a Playmobil collection.

Day 4: It’s good to add some outside time. Mrs. Lawler says to do an outing on this day: museum, Nutcracker, ice skating, etc. Hmmm, does any theater keep showing Nutcracker after Christmas Eve, I wonder? Regardless, I like the idea of getting out for a change of pace. She says to look for discount or free pass days.

Day 5: Have a quiet day at home doing a jigsaw puzzle together, she says. We did this puzzle above as an extended family during that week between Christmas and New Year’s at my parents’ cabin. Of course, I found the puzzle when thrifting. You can find great puzzles for just a few bucks at your local thrift store. Some people avoid getting puzzles at thrift stores for fear of missing pieces. I have only once out of all the puzzles I’ve bought at thrift stores had one with missing pieces. I love putting puzzles together because they are vehicles for conversation and relaxation while still challenging the brain. Here’s my mom and great-niece working together on it, below.

I add to this suggestion to listen to Christmas-themed audiobooks or podcasts while assembling the puzzle if conversation lulls, like The Christmas Chronicles if you didn’t already finish it for the year. Or take turns reading aloud to each other the Christmas chapter books you haven’t finished yet, like Holly Claus. It’s OK to be reading Christmas-y things after Christmas Day!

Day 6: Take your children book shopping. The Lawlers used to go to a huge bookstore and spend all day with each family member totally absorbed in browsing the books. They would let each of the 7 children bring home a book. If you don’t have a huge bookstore in your area, go to a new or used bookstore, including thrift stores. Or if you can’t afford to buy any books, go to the public library, and come home and stay home for the rest of the day, having a reading party, reading the books you just got. This could even be the day you celebrate Jolabokkaflod. That’s the Icelandic word for “Christmas book flood.”

Day 7: New Year’s Eve! She suggests having a party at your home where you have your children invite all their friends to come. Her reasons for hosting the party are here. At the party she suggests smashing the gingerbread houses you made on Boxing Day.

Day 8: New Year’s Day. Watch a family movie she says. Go to Day 8 over here to see her suggestions. I suggest watching Mully, a great documentary/movie to inspire new goals for the new year. (Warning: if you have young children, you might want to skip over some of the early war scenes and the scene where he is abandoned.) If you want to stay Christmas-y, then watch Journey to Bethlehem, The Nativity Story, Muppet Christmas Carol, or Klaus. Home Alone deserves another go-around, especially after you learn of its Christian symbolism. Go here to learn more about that. I have lots of movie suggestions for Christmas here, scroll down to the “Activities” section to see Christmas movies to watch. It’s totally OK to watch Christmas movies after Christmas.

Day 9: For this day, she says to pull out a forgotten box of candy. Then there’s nothing else she suggests. Which surprises me. Just eating a new box of candy is not enough of a family time suggestion to me. Maybe she meant for this day to be a self-directed day of play and learning for each family member, a breather between days of programmed activities.

Day 10: Take a family walk she says. I’m adding here: how about a hike or sledding? A walk isn’t that exciting for most kiddos.

Day 11: Her suggestion on this day is to have a reading day. If you didn’t have Jolabokkaflod already, maybe do it on this day. Use the books you got on the day you went shopping for books! Or have this day be a time you visit an elderly relative or work on crafts, she says.

Day 12: Epiphany Day, January 6. This is the day traditionally celebrated as when the Wise Men arrived to see the Holy Family and gave gifts to Jesus. Mrs. Lawler says to make a Christ the King Spice Crown Cake. For this day, she says to also have your family give your Christmas gifts to each other. That makes sense in honor of the Wise Men giving gifts. She says that on Christmas Day she just did one Santa gift to her children. (They are grown and out of the nest now.) She also says somewhere that if she had to do it over again with her children at home, she would do stockings on St. Nicholas Day, December 6. This is really stretching the season out! I like this idea!

Of course, none of this is set in stone. It’s one veteran homeschooling Catholic mother’s ideas of enjoying family time in the darkest time of the year when school is generally out. It helps to have some guidance with all the free time we have right now. You might already have extended family or friends that you do things with on these days which already sets your rhythm for Christmas vacation. Myself, I prefer to play board games on as many of these days as I can. I like that in the top video the narrator says that the festival of the Twelve Days of Christmas helped make winter a communal time instead of

I hope it gives you some ideas to enjoy these precious winter days! I wish I still had a houseful of children to try this schedule out. This seems like a great recipe for keeping the joy afloat for all of Christmas vacation, keeping the day after Christmas from being a huge letdown. Thank you for sharing these ideas Mrs. Lawler.

Besides playing board games with family, I’ll be finishing up my Merry Christmas Mother’s Curriculum, while adding to it the Twelve Days of Christmas Craft Lit podcast, over here. If you haven’t already checked out those audio and print goodies, please do partake of them. Merry Twelve Days of Christmas everyone!