How to celebrate Christmas on Vacation
When Christmas is celebrated away from home, it can still be magical. Since Christmas breaks are usually longer than other school breaks, they can be a great time for families to go on trips. Mom and Dad may also have an easier time getting away from work because things appear to be a little more relaxed around the office this time of year. If you’re thinking about going on a holiday vacation, your first thought might be: How will you celebrate a traveling Christmas? You’ve come to the right place. We’ve compiled a list of ideas for how to celebrate Christmas while on the road.
Christmas is such a time of tradition and ritual that doing something completely different (such as going to the beach) seems almost inappropriate. But if you plan ahead, you can keep your family’s valuable holiday traditions and still have a great vacation. So, book a hotel in Pineville, NC, without thinking much about it. Here are some suggestions for you on how to celebrate Christmas while traveling.
1. Christmas Celebrations Prior to Your Trip:
One of the best ways to celebrate Christmas while traveling is to celebrate before you leave. So, you can keep up with your normal family routines and still have a great vacation. When we overspend for Christmas, we frequently decide to relocate Christmas. We simply pick another day off and declare it Christmas.
We start the day with cinnamon rolls, open stockings, exchange gifts, share a special meal, and then spend a lazy family day enjoying each other’s company. It may not work with older children who wonder how you can move Christmas, but it works great with a young child or toddler!
2. Have a Christmas celebration on your trip:
Moving the Christmas celebration day may not be feasible for everyone. In those cases, you can still go on your trip; you just need to plan ahead a little so you can bring the essential elements of Christmas with you! Maybe it’s the special stockings your family hangs on the Christmas tree every year, a special candle you light, a book you read, or a religious service you attend as a family.
You already know what special things in your family make it feel like Christmas. So, bake a batch of grandma’s special Christmas cookies, pack the stockings and other essentials, and bring Christmas to your hotel room. Some people have hung a felt Christmas tree or a tapestry of a Christmas tree in their hotel room to make it appear more festive.
Many hotels and resorts around the world will offer special festive meals to fill your tummies with holiday goodness for Christmas dinner. Most of the time, these are accompanied by beautiful table settings, decorations, music, and even visits from Santa Claus to really make your holiday special. In Pineville, you can also book the best hotel near Carolina Place Mall to see the decorations and enjoy the festivities.
If your hotel or resort does not provide anything, do some preliminary research to see what holiday events may be taking place in the town you are visiting. Almost every town in the United States, large and small, will host special Christmas events, and many cities around the world will host festive events as well.
If attending a religious service is an important part of your family’s Christmas traditions, plan to attend one before your trip. Organizing these details ahead of time will ensure that your Christmas plans run smoothly.
3. Give Christmas Gifts While Traveling:
Gifts can be a difficult aspect of doing Christmas away from home, especially if you have young children who are looking forward to seeing Santa Claus. You could have Santa deliver the stocking to the hotel with a note saying that there are more gifts waiting at home.
If you plan to give the kids all of their gifts at the hotel, have them write a letter to Santa explaining why they will be away and where they can be found on Christmas. Giving experiences is another good way to give special gifts that don’t take up much space.
Zoo passes, amusement park tickets, sports tickets, and other special experience gifts are a lot of fun and don’t add a lot of weight to your luggage or have a lot of small pieces that you can lose. Book the closest hotels to Carowinds in Pineville for easy transit if you are planning to visit Carowinds.
4. Spend the holidays with your family and friends:
To avoid being labeled a Grinch because you are skipping town during the holidays, make sure you plan to send gifts and cards to those special people in your life. You don’t want to forget someone in the midst of your journey, so plan ahead of time. Make a list of gifts and cards, and then send them out early. Nobody I know has ever complained about getting a Christmas present early!
5. Travel to see relatives:
This changes things slightly if you are traveling to see family for Christmas. We’ve done this a lot because we live far away from our family. While spending the holidays with our family is very special, we also struggle to feel like we have our own family Christmas traditions.
In terms of gifts, we have found it easier to order most of our gifts online and have them shipped to the family member’s house where we plan to celebrate or the family member with whom we will be staying. You can even have gifts delivered to your hotel address, complete with gift wrap and tags, so you don’t have to fight the crowds on Christmas Eve for the last rolls.
6. Involve your children in holiday planning:
Regardless of your children’s ages, including them in the planning process is an important part of making them feel included in your Christmas family vacation. We all want our children to have wonderful holiday memories. Allowing them to choose some of the Christmas elements that are important to maintaining while on the road can be a key part of this.
This also gives them a place and time to express any concerns they may have about traveling during the holidays, and it allows you to address them as a family.
With these suggestions and a little forethought, I am confident you now know how to celebrate Christmas while traveling and can keep the festive spirit alive.
