This Might Be the Most Genius Memory-Keeping Idea For Parents at Christmastime

In the time between Halloween and Christmas, we see many a mom blogger post photos of her kids in matching holiday pajamas, decorating the Christmas tree, and baking festive cookies on our social media feeds. However, for the average mom (cough, most of us), taking all of those photos and finding the time to memory-keep by posting them to Instagram — let alone getting them into a scrapbook or photo book — is exhausting enough.

Enter: the simplest and most amazing solution to holiday memory-keeping that we were just gifted early.

In a recent post to our Facebook page, we asked readers what has been the best piece of parenting advice that they've ever received. And though we got several incredible nuggets of advice from you all, this genius Christmas morning idea stood out to us.

"Videotape Christmas morning for the first five minutes every year," Miranda Seay Mullins wrote. "It is so fun to watch the excitement."

Although Miranda says she missed last year's taping because her son woke up at 3 a.m. (feeling your pain, Mama), we can't help but think that this is the most incredibly easy and thoughtful way to memory-keep on Christmas. Rather than try to get your kids to sit still in their Christmas jammies or tear their eyes away from their gifts long enough to hold one up and pose, videotaping them while they do their thing means capturing every little thing a photo can't — their genuine reactions to gifts (whether good or bad; you win some, you lose some), their mannerisms, what their favorite gift of the year was, and so much more.

Put all of the videos together once they're a bit older, and — voila! — you have yourself an awesome Christmas time capsule and a keepsake that you (and your child) will want to hold onto and rewatch for years to come. And we bet that if you make this a yearly holiday tradition in your home that your kids will do it with their own future brood as well, meaning years and years of family memories.