November 23, 2008

Our Newest Christmas Tradition

I apologize for talking about Christmas before we've cleared Thanksgiving, but what can you do when Turkey Day bumps up so close to Advent?

Tonight I pulled out all of our Christmas children's books from the garage. I once read a post on a now-defunct blog about wrapping up the holiday books and putting them together in a basket. Each evening, your kids pick one to unwrap and read before bed. I've been meaning to try it ever since hearing about it. I love the way it lets you focus on one book at a time and talk about the story. It's a bit like an interactive version of an Advent calendar. And it keeps the novelty of the books going longer for both kids and parents. With any luck, maybe this year I won't have been asked to read Christmas for 10 one thousand times before mid-December.

We're a little short of the twenty-four books it would take to do the whole season. Which means I get to do a little book shopping! I'd love to get some gems, so I need your help. What are your favorite Christmas books for young kids?


ETA: I followed-up with some of our favorites here.

10 comments:

Sonya said...

The Legend of the Three Trees by
Catherine McCafferty; The Pine Tree Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs

Sam said...

This is such a FANTASTIC tradition! I am going to use it myself - if you don't mind...

Hopefully we'll have our Ukulele for her first Christmas next year and we can begin the tradition then. :)

Jamie said...

This is a wonderful idea!! One that I'm going to add to our family traditions as well. :)
I love the classic "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer"! :)

Tammy said...

Now you've done it... we had our Thanksgiving dinner Saturday night since DH's boss (here in Canada they don't celebrate American Thanksgiving for some reason!) scheduled the shop Christmas party that night. But i've been resisting and resisting getting the Christmas stuff out because ~ blast! ~ it's still Thanksgiving!!! But now I'm going to have to go dig out our books and do this for this kids... they will love it!!! We have several... I'll try to post some when I get them out.

And thanks to Sonya and Scott for The Pine Tree Parable idea... we love The Pumpkin Patch Parable at Halloween and the Parable of the Lily at Easter... I didn't know there was a Christmas one! Off to spend some of my bookstore gift cert.

Mama said...

My favorite secular book is The Polar Express by Chris VanAlsberg. For really digging into the true meaning of Christmas for little ones I like The Story of Christmas by Patricia Pingry.

Natalie
Fellow Adoptive Mommy

Guera! said...

I love that idea! What a great tradition.

Anonymous said...

I know you're probably looking for Christmas books, but we are reading
Happy Thanksgiving Biscuit all day every day at our place. Little Lassie loves it. Thanks for the good idea for a new Christmas tradition!

a Tonggu Momma said...

I love the ones already mentioned. Here are a few more...

The Night of Las Posadas (de Paola)
The Little Drummer Boy (Keats)
If You Take a Mouse to the Movies (Numeroff)
Bear Stays Up For Christmas (Wilson)
Dream Snow (Carle)
Christmas in the Manger (Buck)
Yoon and the Christmas Mitten (Recorvits)

SassyCupcakes said...

I love this idea. It's brilliant.

Third Mom said...

What a fantastic idea! It's too late to start with our kids, but wait until I have grandchildren! What fun!

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