Making Memories at Christmas as a Fostering Family

Christmas can be a magical time of year, and for foster carers, it can be particularly rewarding to be able to share some of that magic with the children you’ve welcomed into your life. However, it’s important to recognise that Christmas comes with challenges too, especially for children in care who might be experiencing a wide range of emotions during the festive period.

Celebrating Christmas as a foster family is about honouring children's views and experiences, and giving them positive experiences and new memories to build on and take forward.

Read on for some of Olive Branch Fostering’s top tips on making memories at Christmas as a fostering family.

Talk About Christmas

The first step to creating new memories with your foster children is to find out how they feel about the season. Talk to them about what Christmas means to them, what their experiences have been up to now, and what their hopes are for this coming Christmas. It’s important to do this before the festivities get started, so that you’re all on the same page. Try to get an understanding of how your child sees Christmas and how it’s looked for them in the past. This should be done in a sensitive and age-appropriate way. Choose a low-pressure environment for your chat, like in the car or while washing the dishes together. Depending on the age of your foster child, you might need their social worker to fill in some of the blanks.

Some foster carers may find themselves fostering children who come from different cultural and religious backgrounds to themselves, in which case it’s important to respect those differences, and to find ways to celebrate that honour everyone’s beliefs. This might mean learning about other religious festivals such as Hanukkah, Diwali and Eid or focusing your Christmas celebrations on secular traditions, such as gift-giving and sharing food.

Give Choices

Wherever possible during the holiday season, give your foster child choices about what they do. While some children might love a surprise visit to Santa’s grotto, or the hustle and bustle of a Christmas market or a Christmas lights switch on, this isn’t the case for every child. Some foster children might feel distressed and overwhelmed by sudden changes of plans and expectations, or overstimulated by all the new sights and sounds that make familiar environments new and strange.

If it isn’t possible to give children a choice about what’s happening, then try to give advance notice and have a visual reminder, such as a date on a calendar or a countdown to when something new and different will be happening so that it doesn’t come as a shock on the day itself.

A Melting Pot of Traditions

When it comes to Christmas traditions, every family is different. You’ll have your own family traditions, and foster children might have their own. You can mix and match both while also making new ones together.

Consider what special family traditions you have that your foster children can become part of. Find out if there’s something they’ve done before, maybe with birth family or previous foster carers, that they’d like to continue while living with you. Or perhaps there’s a tradition they’ve heard others talk about and they’ve always wanted to try it?

Ideas for family traditions include:

• Opening Advent calendars together each morning

• Decorating the tree - they could even choose a special ornament that’s ‘theirs’ that they can hang

• Crafting handmade Christmas cards or decorations like paper chains.

• Christmas baking, for example, making a gingerbread house

• Carol singing

• A walk around the neighbourhood to see all the Christmas lights

• Watching Christmas films together

As you can see, making memories at Christmas doesn’t have to involve spending lots of money, and traditions don’t need to be overly complicated. Memory-making can be simple moments of togetherness that help foster children feel included and involved.

If you do want to get out and about as a family this Christmas, check out our round-up of budget-friendly events in the North West for 2025.

Food & Drink

For many of us, food and drink are a big part of the Christmas celebrations, but for children in care, food and alcohol can both be anxiety-inducing or triggering topics.

Children coming from a background of neglect or abuse might have complicated relationships with food, and negative connotations around adults consuming alcohol in their presence.

It’s important to be aware and mindful of this, and to talk to your foster child about the food and drink plans over the Christmas period. They may be worried about what they’ll eat - particularly if they haven’t had traditional Christmas dishes before, and might prefer to eat something familiar on the day. Being relaxed about this rather than expecting them to eat the same as everyone else can reduce the pressure they feel to ‘perform’ on the day.

If you’re holding a festive gathering where people might be drinking alcohol, reassure children that this will be done responsibly, and ensure that your guests understand this too.

Gift Mindfully

As a foster carer, it’s only natural that you’ll want to spoil your foster children with lots of lovely gifts on their first Christmas with you as a family. However, it’s important to recognise that for some children, this may be their first ever time receiving presents.

While some foster children might be delighted to receive a pile of presents or that one special thing they’ve always wanted, they might also feel overwhelmed, undeserving, or conflicted, knowing that their birth family perhaps couldn’t - or wouldn’t - provide such a gift. They might be unsure how to react appropriately to receiving a present, or worry that gifts are transactional and that they’ll be expected to do something in return. Some foster children might be anxious about presents being withheld for transgressions or being taken away after the fact, and so might need reassurance that any presents are theirs to keep, no matter what.

Additionally, families can feel the strain of financial pressures over the Christmas season, particularly if you have a large family or are fostering siblings. Remember that it isn’t the size, cost or number of presents that makes Christmas special for foster children - it’s being thought of and included in gift giving that matters. A thoughtfully chosen, budget-conscious choice that’s given with love is always the best choice.

Social Media Sharing

While it’s lovely to get plenty of festive photos and videos of your family celebrations over Christmas, it’s vital these aren’t shared on social media. Make sure any visiting family and friends understand this too, and that your child’s school or nursery are aware and don’t share videos of school plays online, for example.

Keeping your family pictures and videos private helps keep foster children safe and prevents unnecessary moves.

Supporting Contact at Christmas

Depending on your foster child’s contact arrangements, you may want to think about how to include their birth parents or wider family in your Christmas plans and celebrations.

For foster children who have face-to-face contact with members of their birth family, make sure any contact visits are planned well in advance and that they don’t clash with other festive arrangements. You could even help them choose and wrap a small gift to take along to the visit.

Be prepared for your foster child to experience a range of emotions about seeing their family over Christmas. Contact over the festive period can be a stark reminder that they’re not living with their family at this special time of year, and bring up feelings of sadness and grief.

Some foster children have letterbox contact with their birth families, and this can be the perfect time to help them write a letter or make a handmade card that their social worker can pass on to birth family.

Olive Branch Fostering

At Olive Branch, we understand that Christmas can be both magical and challenging for our foster families. That’s why we offer a full package of training and support to our foster carers at Christmas and all year round, including our 24/6 365-day-a-year advice line.

If you think you could provide a safe and loving home to a foster child, and would enjoy making memories with them all year round, we’d love to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to contact us, or book a callback to chat with one of our friendly fostering advisors.

We wish you all a joyful holiday season making memories with the ones you love.