Christmas Around the World Crafts for Kids

Santa Claus is coming to town, and your kiddos are amped up to get artsy! Before you sift through the pages and pages of Christmas Eve, Christmas tree and other "Merry Christmas!" crafts for kids, get a global perspective.

As the new year approaches, Christmas celebrants all over the world follow their familiar traditions of opening gifts, singing carols and gathering with friends and family. However, different countries have different traditional Christmas celebrations. An exciting way to help your children understand other cultures and how they celebrate Christmas is to make crafts from the traditions of foreign countries. As you make these Christmas around the world crafts, talk about how you and your family normally celebrate Christmas and compare it with how other people celebrate.

So go ahead and start the pre-Christmas Day crafting madness with these imaginative ideas from Germany, England, Australia, Sweden, Norway and more!

What do Christmas traditions in Germany or Austria look like? You may have already heard about the famed Christmas markets of Germany and Austria, but that's not all! A German tradition similar to that of hanging stockings is leaving a wooden shoe or a slipper next to the hearth for St. Nicholas to fill with small gifts for good children and twigs for bad.

This tradition happens on December 6th. Tell your children about this exciting tradition and get a bunch of plain wooden clogs or plain slippers from a local thrift or discount store. Help your children decorate the shoes or slippers with paint, glitter, buttons, beads, ribbon and bells as a fun Christmas around the world craft.

After Christmas dinner ends, you get home from midnight mass, and the children go to bed, placing the gifts they chose for each other into their slippers or shoes. Chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks could serve as twigs for "naughty" children for the littles to find on Christmas morning. Your kiddos will get a kick out of this shoe-tastic holiday season idea.

The Christmas season in England and the rest of the United Kingdom closely resembles Christmas in North America, but the Yule celebrations aren't always the same. One includes the tradition of crackers, colorful paper tubes with small toys and candy inside. When pulled apart, the traditional crackers make a loud snapping noise, giving the crackers their name. Make these at home from toilet paper tubes. Stick tiny story books, hard candy, chocolates and small toys inside each tube and stuff tissue paper in after them to keep them from falling out.

Wrap each tube in wrapping paper, gathering the ends of the wrapping paper, and tie them closed with ribbon. The next day, your children can each grip the end of a cracker and pull them apart. They won't make noise, but you can sprinkle glitter or confetti on the inside of the wrapping paper for an extra surprise, and as a bonus, you can use some of the leftover confetti for your new year celebration.

Since Australia's and New Zealand's Christmas falls in the summertime, their traditions usually include a meal full of cold treats and seafood. Celebrants may spend as much time swimming on Christmas as they do opening gifts. Some Christmas traditions in Australia include stories of eight white kangaroos pulling Santa's sleigh rather than eight reindeer. Help your child build a sleigh out of cardboard and glue and paint it red. Fill a small cloth bag with little foam blocks wrapped in Christmas paper to represent presents. Then, get some white modeling clay and help your child mold several kangaroos.

This Northern European nation (which doesn't include Finland or the Netherlands) is home to plenty of Christmas around the world crafts! Like most other parts of the world, Scandinavia has developed its own Christmas traditions. In places like Denmark, Sweden and Norway, boys dress up like Christmas billy goats in costumes made of straw. This is the earliest Scandinavian Christmas tradition; some believe it predates Christianity and was absorbed by it later. Swedish girls wear wreaths on their heads with lit candles in them during the Saint Lucia procession and compete to be "Lucia" of the year.

Both of these traditions can lead to fun crafts. Make a papier-mache Christmastime goat head that the children can paint and wear. Go all out and make a fake fur body with holes for arms and legs, or let the children make their own leafy crowns and fake candles from craft foam and construction paper.

Christmastime craftiness doesn't stop at oceans or borders. If you're still on the hunt for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or general holiday season crafts, your creative kiddos can explore the traditions of Japan, the Philippines, Italy, Iceland, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, France, Venezuela, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Slovakia, Greece and more.

For example, Christmas decorations in France include tastefully classic Christmas lights. Instead of making it look like father Christmas spent a Yule-long year decking the halls, the kids can craft a few simple mock paper Christmas lights with card stock and glitter to hang.

The French, like people in Italy, Poland, Canada, Spain and other far (or not-so-far) away places, also decorate with nativity scenes. Your crafty kids can create nativity scenes in mini diorama shoebox settings. Reuse old boxes and deck them out with handmade Christmastime clay figures of the three wise men or baby Jesus in the manger at Bethlehem.

That's it! Now you're ready to celebrate this national holiday in an international way. So light the Yule log, break out the playlist of Christmas carols and count down advent with these new Christmas traditions.