wow... nope... no traditions with sk's. I have a couple with my bios though that were started LONG before steps every came around. My dh has never given a crap one way or another about ANY holiday except the food part of it. But I seriously never thought about it all like this before.

The 1 tradition I have with my own kids that I started with my ds17's very first Christmas (1st baby)... each year I go out and buy each child a special ornament. I usually try to get something that correlates with something that they have done that year, but sometimes if nothing significant happens or anything, it's just some random ornament that I like for them or a cartoon character or something they like that year. After almost 18 years of doing this, we have quite the collection between my 3 kids. Each year they put up their own ornaments on the tree and when they have their first Christmas in their own place, my plan is to give them their ornaments to start their own tree with (and buy myself some new ones to maybe one day have one of those "magazine perfect" trees we were talking about on another post).:) My reason for doing this... I had NOTHING for my first Christmas and was too poor to buy anything worth a crap. But when I married dh that was the ONLY tradition I had with my children that I absolutely refused to share with my sk's. I did everything else as equal and fair as I possibly could and that was one thing I had started with each of my kids from the first Christmas and that was something special between me and the children I carried in my body. But sk's and dh never cared about it anyway so it never was a problem.

I seriously never realized that there really are no "traditions" within our blended family. How strange is that? 11 Christmas's together and nothing that is just between our blended family. Nothing at all that my dh ever contributed in the way of traditions from his family or anything... that is REALLY weird to me... especially weird I never thought of it like that before. Hmmmm... interesting.

My SS18 grew up as an only child (although DH and I gave hime a couple of brothers in the past 4 years). Our traditions included decorating a small Christmas tree with SS during visitation and letting him keep that tree in his bedroom. We also baked cookies during the holidays to give to family and friends.

Just thought of one more thing... we always did silly art projects for every holiday. I have stacks and stacks of construction paper christmas trees, santa hats with cotton glued on, etc...

I have always given my BD an ornament at Christmas that also started with her first Christmas. It is our tradition and I won't stop.

Now SS13 & DH have no traditions AND neither one of them seem to like my ornament giving. They feel like the tree doesnt belong to them because it is covered in ornaments from MY childhood as well as my BD.

I have tried to buy each of them ornaments but of course it is no match to our collection but how is this my fault? Am I supposed to stop my tradition just because DH never started his own?

I used to love Christmas but now I dread it! I don't want to decorate at all but I will only because my BD loves it!

We just continued my traditions. Bm doesn;t have any at all. She takes the kids to the store lets them pick out their gifts and gives them to them. She gets up the tree and does all the cooking. She brags about doing everything herself.

I on the other hand have always bought a new ornament for my kids every year so when I got married I started doing it for the boys and they love this. Sometimes I just buy one other times I let them make one. Then We make ginger bread houses, make cookies, and have hot coco. We also go to the lights of the ozarks and we drive around to see all the lights people put up. I also get each kid new PJs for christmas eve.

I just started doing everything with skids as well as with mine.

Yeah, we've always had traditions. We've been a blended family since ss was 1. We always decorate our tree on T-giving weekend. We always had a real tree (until this year since dh is away we did artificial and it saddened all my kids). Dh and I drink wine while decorating the tree. The kids drink sparkling grape juice out of fancy glasses. We see a movie t-giving weekend. We watch every stinking xmas special known to man-all the ones on lifetime, the cartoon ones, dvd-every night starting with t-giving w/e it is xmas movies. We go to midnight mass on xmas eve. WE have my family over on xmas eve. We used to open our family presents on xmas eve am or xmas am depending on what day ss was here that year. We would tell the kids that they got presents one day early that year cause Santa had so much to do that he started early with them. Well, with the exception of last year-dh and I finished wrapping presents xmas eve around 1am-we woke all the kids up and said Santa had already been there. HAHA. We live in a very um, Christmasy town, so we go to our local xmas parade, and view all of the xmas lights in our town. We have dh's family over whenever his bm is not working (she's a nurse) and we do a sneaky Santa gift exchange. Wow-I could go on-I'm probably boring you. I guess it is one respect in which we are lucky. We blended our family when they were so young (2, 1, and 9 months)that all traditions have always been OURS.

when I was growing up there was mom's tree, and the kid tree. lol ya know mom had to have her perfect themed matching color tree. so our solution was to have our own cheap 6ft tree, then put all our ornaments on it in another room. the fact that it was "ours" too made it even more fun. so maybe something like that would be a good suggestion for you. no worries if the ornaments get broke or lost, cause its theres. and it leaves you room to do your own holiday decorating the way you want it done without the fear of your ornaments ending up trashed.

this christmas being the first christmas our house was finished, we let the 4 year old put all the plastic ornaments up so they wouldn't break, then if there were to many bunched together we just went around and moved them later when he wasn't looking. lol until bulbs start breaking I'm fine doing it this way.

I grew up with awesome Christmases in the "great white north". My mother got us an ornament each year (there's just nothing like that avacado green mushroom with the elf on it!), and I continued it with my BD and my late husband. We always had such lovely holidays.

DH would get a tree, buy some crappy ass ornaments, slap them on the tree, then toss EVERYTHING out after Christmas. NO traditions. His kids don't even know the meaning of Christmas other than "gimme gimme".

Thus, no blended family anything. We go to his sister's for the morning, watch everyone greedily tear into gifts. Then, everyone leaves. My daughter comes for dinner on Christmas. We open gifts, eat, have a good time. I'd still much rather have my former holidays, heck, I'd rather have my former life! But.....

The holidays are not good for me.....always a little sad at this time of year....

Sd lives with BM, she is primary. DH does x-mas exchange/dinner with SD at MIL's whenever his every other weekend visit falls closest to Christmas. Since we have no kids together, we do little things that we look forward to. We go trudging through the cold and snow and pick out our tree and cut it down, then enjoy some hot chocolate together when we get back cold and wet! We get each other ornaments every year with the other's name on it. We bake cookies together then put them in tins and share w/ family and friends. We go to the local park and drive through the annual light display. And on Christmas Eve we watch Garfield's Christmas special. MIL never really did anything traditional or special for DH when he was growing up, so these are a lot of things that I always did when I lived at home during Christmas time. When we have kids, I'm sure we will pass this down for them to enjoy doing as well!

Oh, and another thing that my mother always did for us when we were younger was get the advent calenders. I used to love them!

We have several. We always decorate the tree on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I always make cookies while the kids decorate. And we listen to Christmas Carols while we get the tree decorated.

We always go out to eat on Christmas Eve and then to look at the lights.

We go to church every Sunday as a family, but we always go on Christmas Eve no matter what day it falls on.

I always get the kids new pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve. They open the present when we get home from church. And they always act surprised when they open their gift and find Christmas pajamas.

We always bake a Birthday Cake for Jesus. And on Christmas morning before we get too caught up in presents, we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.

...I could keep going. We have lots of Holiday traditions in our family. We don't differentiate in our house between steps and bios. They are all "our kids" and they all participate.