It is the night before Christmas, your shopping is done, the kids are out of school or you have gotten out of work early and you are wondering what to do on Christmas Eve.

Here are some ideas for spending Christmas Eve in your West Hills apartment.

1) Snuggle in and watch a Christmas Classic.  Whether you rent it from Red Box, select it from your DVD collection, find it on NetFlix or Hulu or tune into the hundreds of shows on television, nothing says Christmas like a movie.  Some classics not to miss; The Grinch, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, Bad Santa, Trading Places, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Elf, and Kung Fu Panda Holiday!  Or maybe Seinfield’s Festivus episode or the Black Candle celebrating Kwanzaa.

2) Track Santa with Google’s Santa Tracker.

3) Take in a Christmas Eve service in West Hills.  The West Hills Community Church has two masses on Thursday December 24th.  One at 4:00 pm and the other at 5:30 pm.  The Unitarian Church in West Hills has a Christmas Eve candlelight service with carols and candles starting at 6:00 pm.  St. Bernadine in Woodland Hills has two masses featuring the Children’s Choir at 3:30 and 5:30 and a mass at 10:00 am with Carols beginning a 1/2 hour before mass.

4) A nice tradition that is perfect for a family or a couple is to give the gift of an ornament on Christmas Eve.  Each year before you go to bed give an ornament and place it on your tree.  The gift can bring back memories of a vacation, an event during the year (new baby, wedding), or represent a sports team or other activity that your loved one likes.  The best part of this tradition each year you can reflect on the ornament that was given the year before and soon you will have an entire tree of Christmas Eve ornaments.

5) Get in the car and head on over to Woodland Hills to see the Christmas Light Display on Candy Cane Lane.

Even if you aren’t celebrating Christmas, most of us will have a 3 day weekend, so open a bottle of wine or make a cup of hot cocoa and relax because no matter what you believe in somehow it really is “the most wonderful time of the year”.