4 Blog Posts to Help You Navigate the December Holidays With Your Troop

If you have walked around any store in the past few weeks, you know that the holidays are all around you. While shopping in my local Walmart this past October, the trifacta of holidays were in full display, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. It was like all three just blended into the other.

If you are a new Daisy leader, this will be your first holiday season with your girls. You have choices to make that will create a tradition that you may want to continue, so you have to be careful when choosing what to do. 

What am I talking about?

I am talking about celebrating Christmas with your troop. 

Images from Ivorymix and Pixabay and altered by the author in Canva

Girl Scouts is a non-denominational activity. It is not affiliated with any particular religious group. If you start celebrating religious holidays with your troop, it may be an issue to take away your traditions and celebration if a new girl joins your troop and she does not celebrate this December holiday (or may be agnostic or atheist and not celebrate any kind of religious holiday at all).

I am Jewish and do not celebrate Christmas. As the leader, I made the decision during our first year as a troop to not do anything related to this holiday or to do a gift exchange of any sort. My personal experience as a child with this was not a positive one, and with my older daughter's troop, this activity proved to be a dud for some of the girls. The girls in my troop, both Jewish and Christian, received enough gifts and went to plenty of celebrations during the holiday season, so there was no reason to add another one. Instead, my troop always does a community service project in lieu of a party because there are so many others in need.

Over the years, I have written several blog posts on this topic. As new leaders, you probably have not read them, and so I am bringing these to your attention so you can be inclusive and understanding to girls of different faiths in your group. Please do not assume that these girls families "won't mind" you celebrating a holiday with them that they do not celebrate. Many are not like me and do not want to rock the boat and are afraid to have their child seen in an unkind light.

Other December Meeting Ideas

In this blog post, 10 Activities Your Girl Scout Troop Can Do This Holiday Season, I share 10 things you can do with a troop that have nothing to do with the celebrating Christmas or Chanukah.

Read the blog post here

Having Holiday Parties for Only One Holiday

In this blog post, I wrote about what I was reading from Facebook groups about what leaders had to say about this matter. I was floored at the insensitivity of some of these women and was inspired to share what it looked like from the other side of the fence. Girl Scouts is about inclusion above all else.

Read the blog post here

Winter Craft Ideas

If you want to have a celebration, then the crafts need to be non-denominations. You can read here some fun winter crafts for your troop to do.

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Being a Sensitive Leader

In this blog post, you can read my opinion on this matter and why December does not have to be all about Christmas, but it can be about giving to others.

Image from Pixabay and altered by the author on Canva

Fun and Easy Thanksgiving Meeting Idea for Daisy Scouts

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Updated October 2019

It is that time of year when all of the weeks turn into a blur because the holidays are coming fast and furious! As a leader, you have so many obligations outside of Girl Scout that all you want to do is figure out how to have a meeting and make it easy on yourself.

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This is where Thanksgiving craft kits come in handy. You can make this meeting more of a festive atmosphere than a badge/petal meeting.

The children learn about the holiday in school, so they have some knowledge about it. Here is a simple meeting format.

Discuss the meaning of Thanksgiving and what the children are thankful for. Then have them do one of the following crafts.




Once the craft is over, you can sing some Thanksgiving songs together. You can find them here at DLTK You can also find more songs here at Everything Preschool.

Don't forget to have a Thanksgiving coloring page in case you finish faster than you thought you would!