Celebrating the holidays without a loved one isn’t easy, especially the first holiday season without them.

However, you can memorialize them during the holidays through keeping old traditions and creating new ones. It’s the little things, like mementos and traditions, that help us honor and remember our loved ones.

We’ve come up with some holiday memorial crafts and traditions to memorialize loved ones this holiday season.

Dried Flower Ornament

Mementos provide us with physical reminders of our loved ones. For example, you can preserve a loved one’s funeral flowers by making a DIY dried flower ornament. Or, you can use their favorite flower instead.

Before making the ornament, first, you need to dry the flowers.

There are many ways to do this, such as:

• Pressing the flowers in a book between wax paper for about a week.
• Hanging them upside-down to air-dry.
• Leaving them in a vase with a few inches of water.
• Putting them in a container filled with a drying agent, like silica gel, for a few days.
• Microwaving them in a microwave-safe container filled with silica gel.

Some methods may work better than others depending on the flower. For more information, check out this article.

To make this craft, you’ll need a clear glass ornament with a removable top. Carefully put the flower petals and any other decorations into the ornament. Then, tie a ribbon through the hole or use an ornament hook to hang your memento. For more details, check out this DIY ornament article.

Holiday Scrapbook or Photo Album

You can preserve holiday memories by creating a holiday scrapbook or compiling photos for a photo album. If you want a craft project, you can make a scrapbook filled with photos from the holidays. You also can include photos of your mementos and memorial traditions.

Then, your family can look at all the holiday memories of your loved one. It can even be an annual tradition to gather and page through the holiday scrapbook.

Or, you can create a photo album for a less time-consuming task. It’s another meaningful way to preserve memories and look at photos of your loved one whenever you wish.

Photo Wreath

If you’d rather have photos of your loved one on display, you can create a DIY photo wreath. It’s a festive way to honor a loved one during the holiday season.

To make this craft, you’ll need:

• An embroidery hoop
• Fabric
• Scissors
• Glue gun or double-sided tape
• Twine and ribbon
• Photos
• Mini clothespins
• Other holiday decorations

Check out our 7 DIY Photo Mementos blog post for more details on making this craft!

Traditions to Memorialize a Loved One

Another way to pay tribute to our loved ones is by creating memorial traditions. It can be your own tradition or something that your whole family does together.

For example, here are a few holiday memorial tradition ideas:

• Leave a chair for them at the holiday dinner table.
• Serve their signature dish at your holiday dinner.
• Light a remembrance candle in their memory.
• Set out a picture frame of them or a photo memento you created.
• Visit their gravesite or ash scattering location.
• Have a releasing ceremony with biodegradable lanterns.
• Read aloud a memorial poem or prayer before dinner.
• Play their favorite song or a memorial song.

What other holiday memorialization ideas do you have? Share them with us in the comments!