Dressing Tweens and Teens in Christmas Style

I remember dressing my kids for Christmas when they were small. Princess just loved getting dressed up–you couldn’t put too many sparkles, ruffles or poufy skirts on her. Buddy would wear a little suit “like Papa” without any complaint and look like a little miniature man.

*sigh*

Those were the days.

When Walmart asked me to write about “Kids Style” for the holidays I headed into the store and had an attack of nostalgia looking at all the lovely little girls Christmas dresses and little boys Christmas suits.

So much cuteness! Then I headed into the boys section and the juniors section to look around. . . and it just wasn’t the same. Of course Princess is a freshman this year and doesn’t DO sparkles, flounce and fluff anymore. Buddy is in 7th grade and while he’ll dress up for church and family events, they just don’t make the same kind of adorable little sets for the bigger kid crowd.

What do you buy for Christmas clothes when your kids start growing up?

Well with Buddy, I do like him to dress for church anyway. (I think that dressing a bit more formally for church shows a level of respect for where you are and what you are doing. Does God love you the same in jeans and a T shirt? Certainly. But to my mind it shows our respect and love for God to treat attending services in his house as something worth dressing up for) Since we do dress, anything that we used for Christmas can also be used throughout the year for church. We already had black pants (used for church and for Chorus concerts and such) and standard white shirts, so we went with a nice soft gray George shirt with clip on tie. Then to spice it up a bit for Christmas I went over to the Men’s section and found a snowman tie. . . but not just any snowman tie–one that lights up and plays a song when you press it.

I tied the tie pretty short and did an extra wrap around the knot, then we tuck the extra long tail into his shirt. I use a half-windsor knot, which I learned years and years ago when my brother was working on his merit badges for Boy Scouts and he had to teach someone to tie a necktie. It’s been a useful skill to have. Here’s a quick video (although I wrapped twice to use up more of the tie since at 12 Buddy still has a short torso):

For Princess . . . well there really wasn’t much in the way of dresses available in store at Walmart. What they did have were some fun T-shirts, sweaters and hoodies. They also had a wide selection of “ugly sweater” type items for folks in the market for that.

I just fell in love with this fun, slightly corny, Santa and reindeer “fair isle” style hoodie.

Although I haven’t been able to judge her style well lately (teens are quite particular as many of you know) this one was a home run. She thought it was cute.

Of course–this isn’t dressy enough for church, but it’s something fun she can wear leading up to Christmas and on Christmas Day.

So–those of you with teens, what kind of Christmas clothing do you buy?