A beautiful thing about our Catholic Faith is that we don’t have to rush Christmas. In fact, we get all of Advent to prepare ourselves for it, and then a whopping 40-ish days to celebrate it (if you’re going by the old calendar and enjoying the season until Candlemas on February 2nd). With school on break, vacations from work, and the set-in of winter weather, take some time to really celebrate Christmas. The list below should help you get started. What Catholic things would you add? Leave a comment below!

33 Catholic Things To Do During Christmas

1. Pray the rosary.
2. Pray all 20 decades of the rosary.
3. Read the Bible.
4. Put down your phone and spend lots of time with your family.
5. Call relatives that you don’t often get a chance to talk to.
6. Be open to life with your spouse.
7. Keep up some (or all!) of your Christmas lights/decorations.
8. Pray along on the Lectio Divina with the guys from The Godsplaining Podcast (One of the hosts, Fr. Gregory, was on the podcast recently talking about how to cultivate an eternal perspective during hard times – Episode 161 – check it out!)
9. Sing Christmas carols every day.
10. Go caroling in your neighborhood (Yes really!). Bring along drinks, friends, and a mix of traditional and modern tunes. But please, skip “Mary, Did You Know?” Because, yes, she did. See Luke 1:26-36.
11. Between Christmas and Epiphany, wish people at home and people you meet out and about a Merry Christmas.
12. Bring your at-home nativity scene together slowly – wait until Christmas Day to put Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the stable. Have the Wise Men “travel” there until Epiphany.
13. Watch reruns of Mother Angelica Live on YouTube.
14. Set a big white Christ candle in the center of your Advent wreath and light it daily.
15. Go to Mass on Friday, January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (it’s a Holy Day of Obligation!)
16. Have your children pick out one of their new gifts to donate to charity.
17. Read a book about a saint. Might I suggest this one on Padre Pio? And listen to Episode 148 on Pio and Episode 112 on the saints with Claire Dwyer of The Catholic Mama Podcast
18. Watch EWTN.
19. Start a consecration to Jesus through Mary (I love St. Louis de Montfort’s original one) or through Joseph (Pope Francis declared this year as a year of St. Joseph. Perfect timing! Listen to my chat with Fr. Don Calloway, author of the book Consecration to St. Joseph on Episode 154.
20. Listen to Catholic podcasts (ahem…like mine)
21. Wake up extra early for quiet prayer time.
22. Enjoy dessert every day (but don’t be gluttonous!)
23. Go to confession.
24. Go to daily Mass.
25. Read Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed
26. Read The World’s First Love by Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen
27. Check on elderly neighbors to make sure they have everything they need and help them as best as possible, if they don’t.
28. Visit a cemetery and pray for the dead.
29. Go for a walk and enjoy God’s natural creation.
30. Start to learn Latin on the Duolingo app and read up on the Traditional Latin Mass.
31. Set aside 15+ minutes per day for prayer with your entire family and another 15 minutes for prayer with your spouse. 
32. If you don’t have a home altar/shrine set up, see what you have around the house to work on creating one. 
33. Offer up your daily suffering and works to the Lord for the greater good. 

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