Looking for meaningful Christmas traditions for couples? Hugo and I have a lot of Christmas traditions! Some of them have been in place since our first Christmas together and we’ve added others through the years. Whether we are spending Christmas in Paris or traveling, we make sure to prioritize our Christmas traditions every year.
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Christmas traditions for couples
These are our favorite Christmas traditions for couples that we come back to year after year. They add so much connection and joy to our holiday season. We hope you love them as much as we do.
Write each other a Christmas letter
Each Christmas season we go shopping for Christmas cards together. One of our favorite places in Paris to shop for beautiful cards is Brentano’s, one of the most beautiful English bookshops in Paris.
We always travel at Christmas (more on that later in this post) and sometimes we will choose a local shop in the place we are visiting to buy our Christmas cards for one another.
Inside the card we will write about beautiful experiences we shared during the year, reasons we’re proud of each other, things we want to experience in the upcoming year and lots of affirmations of love.
Go to see the decorations where you love
Every year we get excited to go back to all of our favorite spots in Paris to see the decorations. There are so many beautiful places to see!
Some of our favorite places to go are Avenue Montaigne to see the trees decorated with lights and the Dior storefront and windows.
We also love to see the lights along the Champs-Elysées, the Chanel and Dior storefronts, and the bows made of lights on rue Faubourg Saint Honoré.
We never miss the Place Vendôme and the Printemps windows!
Celebrate the 12 days of Christmas
Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas was a tradition in my home growing up and remains to this day one of my favorite childhood memories.
My mom would choose 12 small gifts for myself, my sister and my brother and we would open one present each night. Rather than following the traditional 12 days of Christmas dates (starting on Christmas Day, December 25th and continuing until January 5th), our 12 days of Christmas started 12 days before Christmas and ended Christmas day.
I brought this family tradition into my new life with Hugo as soon as we met and moved in together. The first several years together, we celebrated as my family always had for the twelve days leading up to Christmas.
In recent years we’ve decided to celebrate according the traditional 12 days of Christmas dates, so we start on Christmas day and end of January 5th which just happens to be our dating anniversary so it works out perfectly.
Some 12 days of Christmas ideas?
Shopping for presents for the 12 days of Christmas is so much fun!
Small, meaningful gifts make great 12 days of Christmas ideas. In the past Hugo and I have gifted each other tea, coffee, chocolates, spices, lip balm , hand cream, massage oil, souvenirs picked up on our travels…
Variations on this idea could be acts of service – write out 12 loving things you will do for your partner (a massage, go for a romantic walk, a foot rub, etc.)
Another idea I love is planning 12 dates for your love. You could have an over arching theme that includes all 12 dates such as 12 coffee dates, 12 wine bars, 12 bakeries, etc. Choose 12 different experiences, one for each day of Christmas. You can enjoy the experience the day of or plan it for the future, for example, one per month over the next 12 months.
In Paris, activity ideas could include visiting Sainte Chapelle, a boat ride on the Seine, or a visit to the Rodin museum.
Make these printable 12 days of Christmas cards for extra festive cheer!
Go to a Christmas market
Christmas markets are one of our favorite destinations during the Christmas season!
Our favorite Christmas market in Paris is the Notre Dame Christmas market. It is the most charming, traditional and authentic Christmas market in Paris.
In the past we’ve visited the Christmas markets in many other places around France and across Europe, including Alsace, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Luxembourg.
Take a special Christmas trip
We always travel with Hugo’s family at Christmas. We choose a different destination each year and spend time exploring on our own and with our family. We’ll typically arrive a few days before the rest of our family and/or leave a few days after to make sure we have some special quality just the two of us in addition to family time.
Following our family Christmas trip with Hugo’s family, we head somewhere to spend New Year’s Eve together just the two of us and then go to Italy to spend time with my family.
Last year we spent Christmas in Amsterdam and it was absolutely magical! We loved experiencing Amsterdam in Winter.
Take a Christmas market trip
We are a touch Christmas market obsessed!
Each year, we travel to experience Christmas markets in a new place or go back to a favorite location to get our dose of Christmas cheer.
A couple of years, we embarked on a Christmas market extravaganza – driving cross France and Germany in search of the best Christmas markets Europe has to offer. We visited 47 (!) Christmas markets on that trip and loved every moment.
Make a list of all of the Christmas markets you want to visit together and then set out to visit a few each year.
Don’t forget to send yourselves a postcard from each place you visit – one of our favorite couples’ traditions all year long!
Decorate a Christmas tree
Of course decorating a Christmas tree as a couple is a classic Christmas experience to share.
As the years together go by, this tradition becomes more and more special as you increase the number of times you’ve decorated your tree as a couple and the number of tree decorating memories you share.
You could even add a tradition of each selecting a special ornament to gift each other the day or night you decorate the tree. This would help you build your collection of Christmas ornaments over time with meaningful decorations.
If you would like to add some beautiful decorations to your collection, check out our favorite Francophile Christmas ornaments here.
Enjoy the same drink each year as you decorate the tree
Each year when we decorate our Christmas tree we have a homemade French hot chocolate.
Hugo makes the best hot chocolate ever! Each year, we choose when we’ll decorate our Christmas tree and Hugo will make homemade French hot chocolate using real, dark chocolate and homemade whipped cream. It is absolutely divine!
Your tradition could be to drink hot chocolate as well or any other drink you love – cranberry juice, wine, Champagne, Prosecco, a Christmas cocktail or any other drink of your choice!
Collect Christmas tree ornaments when you travel
This is less a Christmas tradition and more a tradition for any time of year that you get to enjoy at Christmas!
When we travel, we pick up Christmas tree ornaments when we see a beautiful decoration that catches our attention.
We do follow a few “guidelines” for this tradition to make sure that we truly love and enjoy the decorations we buy during our trips.
One – we don’t feel like we have to buy a Christmas tree decoration on every trip. This would add pressure to our travels and potentially encourage us to buy decorations that we didn’t truly love just to make sure that every destination was represented on our tree. We only buy a decoration in a place if we really love it.
Two – to keep things looking elegant and cohesive, we only buy ornaments within a certain color way. All of our ornaments are white or gold or white and gold. This is the trick to making sure they all go together beautifully!
Three – we don’t buy decorations with names of places written on them. We respect if you love these types of decorations but they’re just not our style. We don’t want the tree to feel like it’s full of souvenirs but rather decorated with true Christmas treasures. Ornaments with names of places written on them just aren’t our cup of tea.
Four – just because something wasn’t initially made to be an ornament doesn’t mean it can’t be transformed into one! The example that comes to mind is a beautiful little white porcelain canal house we picked up in Amsterdam. It wasn’t designed as an ornament but we were able to attach a ribbon to it and it looks perfect on our tree.
This was the first Christmas decoration we bought while traveling that launched our collection! We bought this vintage, blown glass Christmas house in an antique shop in Bruges, Belgium and it remains one of our favorite Christmas tree treasures to this day.
Bake something special together
We love to bake and find it’s even more fun when we bake together.
Hugo does all of the cooking in our home but every once in a while we will bake something delicious together.
We love to create recipes together and then Hugo typically executes on them on his own but baking is the exception. We enjoy preparing a batch of cookies or whipping up some chocolate covered madeleines together.
Christmas is the perfect occasion to bake something together to start your own new tradition. You could share your creations with your guests if you are planning to host a Christmas party or bring your baked goods along with you if you’re planning to attend holiday parties throughout the season.
Stuck for ideas on what to bake? Want to impress your friends and loved ones with some French treats?
Get your copy of our e-Cookbook : Sucre, 15 French Desserts from Our Parisian Kitchen!
Christmas traditions for couples
These are the Christmas traditions for couples we come back to again and again each year. Which ones are your favorites? Are you going to try these this year?
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