How Grandparents Can Play a Major Role in Creating a Happy Christmas for Everyone

Christmas is a magical time filled with traditions, family gatherings, and the joy of giving. Grandparents, with their unique position in the family, have a wealth of opportunities to contribute to making the holiday season truly special. 

Their experience, wisdom, and unconditional love can bring warmth and connection to Christmas celebrations. Here's how grandparents can help ensure everyone has a happy Christmas.

1. Keep Family Traditions Alive

Grandparents often serve as the custodians of family traditions. Whether it’s baking mince pies, reading a favourite Christmas story, or decorating the tree with vintage ornaments, these traditions provide a comforting sense of continuity. Sharing stories about past Christmases or explaining the origins of certain customs can deepen the family’s appreciation of the holiday.

Tip: Involve grandchildren in these activities. Teaching them how to make a family recipe or sharing memories can create a meaningful bond.

2. Offer Practical Help

The holiday season can be hectic for parents juggling work, shopping, and hosting. Grandparents can step in to lighten the load, whether by babysitting, helping with gift wrapping, or preparing dishes for the Christmas feast.

Tip: Communicate with family members to see where help is most needed. Small acts of kindness can ease the stress for everyone.

3. Create New Traditions

While honouring old customs is wonderful, grandparents can also introduce new ones. These might include organising a family Christmas movie night, leading a singalong, or planning a Christmas craft activity with the grandchildren.

Tip: Choose activities that cater to all ages, so everyone can join in the fun.

4. Be the Bridge Between Generations

Grandparents have the special ability to connect different generations within the family. This could mean mediating family disagreements, ensuring that everyone feels included, or simply being a source of wisdom and calm during the hustle and bustle.

Tip: During family gatherings, make an effort to engage with both younger and older relatives, encouraging conversations and laughter.

5. Share the Gift of Time

Sometimes, the greatest gift isn’t under the tree—it’s the time spent together. Grandparents can plan activities that focus on togetherness, like going for a wintry walk, playing board games, or enjoying a quiet moment with a grandchild.

Tip: Make it a priority to spend quality one-on-one time with each family member where possible. These moments will be cherished long after the Christmas season ends.

6. Focus on the True Spirit of Christmas

Amidst the commercial hustle, grandparents can remind the family of the deeper meanings of Christmas: kindness, gratitude, and love. Whether through storytelling, volunteering together, or encouraging thoughtful gift-giving, grandparents can help ground the celebrations in what truly matters.

Tip: Organise a family charitable activity, such as donating to a local food bank or crafting cards for a care home.

7. Spoil (but Not Overwhelm) the Grandkids

Grandparents are often seen as the ultimate gift-givers, and their generosity can make Christmas magical for the little ones. However, balance is key—too many presents can be overwhelming and dilute their value.

Tip: Instead of focusing solely on material gifts, consider giving experiences, such as tickets to a pantomime, a cooking day together, or a personalised book about their Christmas adventures.

8. Lead by Example

Grandparents can model the joy of giving, gratitude, and inclusivity. When they embody the Christmas spirit, it inspires the whole family to follow suit.

Tip: Share your own stories of meaningful Christmases past, especially those where the focus was on family and giving rather than materialism.

Christmas is about family, and grandparents are often the heart of it. By sharing their time, love, and wisdom, they can ensure that everyone—young and old—feels valued and connected during the festive season. This Christmas, let grandparents shine in their role as the glue that brings the family together for a truly happy celebration.

What are your favourite ways to involve grandparents in Christmas festivities? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

First-of-its-kind storytelling platform enables parents to make a bespoke family storybook for their children

Storydo is designed to strengthen children’s identity by showing them loved and secure at the heart of their family.

Storydo is a groundbreaking platform that uses innovative software that makes it easy for all parents to create a bespoke book for their child that tells their unique family story.

The finished hardcover, A4 book captures the child’s story from grandparents, pregnancy and birth, right through to the family’s best holidays. Storydo books include all the people, places and activities that are important in the child’s life and are for all types of families, from solo to nuclear to blended.

How Storydo works

Customers choose a design, answer tailored questions and upload photos to create their book. The software that powers the Storydo Bookbuilder ‘writes’ text based on the answers and creates pages that users can edit as they go along. Respondents follow prompts and rarely have to write more than a few words, making it an easy process, even for people who are not used to writing. There are thousands of possible pathways through the book, depending on each family’s setup, so it really can tell every family’s unique family story, allowing the parents to decide what they would like to share. Once finished, the high-quality, hardcover A4 book is printed and posted.

The benefits of Storydo

Storydo is designed to strengthen children’s identity by showing them loved and secure at the heart of their family. They validate each child’s lived experience and family set-up by showing them in a book, which research suggests helps children with self-esteem. Furthermore the books encourage family storytelling, which has been shown to make families closer and more resilient, and support the emotional as well as cognitive development of children.

Making a Storydo book is not just beneficial for the children: the many families that made a book during the extensive user testing said that making a book made them feel good about their family, and that it told their family story well.

Experts helped with the language, particularly explaining the more complex subjects, such as adoption, bereavement and gamete donation. Furthermore, the books have been designed to not just normalise but celebrate diverse families, such as single, same-sex and blended families. 

FACTFILE:

About the founders 

Storydo was founded by two mums, Sonja and Nina, who wanted to use the storytelling skills they honed in the corporate publishing world to make a difference. They found that most families had tens of thousands of family photos, which were never printed, and often forgotten. In lockdown, they developed a revolutionary way of using these images and memories to craft the family narrative in a way that is accessible to everyone.

A bit more about Storydo

* They are inclusive and work for all family setups

* Developed with experts

* The high-quality, A4, hardcover books typically contain between 60-90 pages, depending on the pathway and what the customer chooses to include

* Price £69 (similar to making an equivalent photobook on the larger consumer photobook platforms).

https://storydo.co.uk