Lots of great ideas and traditions here. I hope to make Christmas Eve more of a family night in future years. Right now, ds1 goes to his aunt's (my ex's sister) for dinner on Christmas Eve. He only sees that part of his family a couple of times a year, so I would never mess with it. However, I drive him over and pick him up, before getting stockings ready and putting the last few presents under the tree. It makes for a somewhat tiring evening. In another year or two, he should have his own license, which will take that off me, anyway. In the middle of the day, we have my dad over for lunch, which is nice.
I think I only posted about Christmas Day. We have a lot of traditions, but most of them aren't specifically for Christmas. I always get my tree up several days ahead. I know many people treasure doing the tree on Christmas Eve, but that sounds really hectic to me. I like to have it up ahead of time. When I'm not pregnant, dh and I like to sit down and have a small shot (maybe 1/2 oz.) of Goldschlager together while watching our tree. That started when I first tasted Goldschlager and said "this tastes like Christmas smells".
We alway do a gingerbread house. I used to use the kits, until I started thinking about just how old that gingerbread must be and looked at the label. Blech. Now, I bake my own. The kids all pitch in on that, and on cutting out and icing sugar cookies. I also bake pfefferneusse, Nanaimo bars, mincemeat tarts and shortbread. Those are all done in the week or two leading up to Christmas (mincemeat first, if I don't already have some, then shortbread - the rest in any old order, but usually the gingerbread house first).
I think I mentioned the movies, but I'm not sure. We do a Christmas movie each Friday for anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks leading up to Christmas. We mix up comedies and classics...so, maybe Scrooged one week, then It's a Wonderful Life, then Elf, then A Christmas Carol - you get the idea. The kids love it, and it's a nice, quiet family evening.
We always do 1 or 2 of the local "big" activities...the Christmas train, Festival of Lights at the botanical gardens, Heritage Christmas at the local "Village Museum" (haven't done that yet, but it's on deck for this year), etc.
This year, I'm getting off my butt to organize a hamper from our family to a local family in need. I keep talking about it, but this year I'll actually do it! That will be an annual thing, once we get started.
Wealso craft lots of Christmas decoration. I made a big tree out of poster board a few years ago. DD1 and I did some simple cut out decorations and glued them on. I take it out every year, and we add a few decorations to it - cut out shapes with a bit of glitter glue, pictures from cards, etc. When it gets full, I'll probably make another one, and put them both up.
We don't do it, but I've talked to quite a few moms who do activity based advent calendars. Each day, they take out a slip of paper with a simple activity ("walk in the woods and look for birds" or "make cookies" or "string popcorn") and do it. Usually, they'll throw in a couple of bigger ones, as well.
On Christmas Day itself, we open gifts as a family in the morning, right after stockings. We nibble on my baking and drink coffee/hot chocolate/milk/whatever while we do that. Afterwards, we mostly just chill at home, and play with/eat/use our new gifts. Then, we go up to mom's in the late afternoon, for a gift exchange - all the gifts for all the grandchildren (my and my sibling's kids). Once that's done, we hang around and talk until mom puts her lovely dinner on the table. She does the whole thing herself, but I bring dessert and a potato casserole from dh's late grandmother's recipe.
I've also been sick for the last 8/10 Christmases so I order people around 
) and then fall "asleep" when we hear the others arriving because in our tradition, Santa doesn't visit a house if people are awake. We then open presents. It's kind of hokey, but it is lots of fun.
