Christmas Book Tradition

Image found here

My sister has a great advent tradition in her family. Her in-law family exchange children's christmas books each christmas. This tradition has happened for many years and so they have quite the collection of christmas stories.

At the end of each christmas season my sister wraps all of the christmas books and puts them away for next season. Each season she pulls them out (so easy...already wrapped) and places them under her tree. They do a countdown to christmas with books. So each child takes a turn each night unwrapping a book and reading it as a family. What a fun family activity.

If you don't have a lot of christmas books (like us) you can put several on hold at your local library. Pick them up, wrap them (or not) and have plenty of holiday books to read this season.

Our Favorite Christmas Book

Christmas in the Barn

By Margaret Wise Brown

Pictures by Barbara Cooney

This book was written in 1952. The illustrations are some of my very favorite. But you have to make sure it's illustrated by Barbara Cooney, there are other illustrators of the same book.


My youngest daughter (2.5) had me read this book 5 times in a row for her. And I just read it to my oldest (3.5) in her bed tonight. The illustrations and story were so captivating to her. We had read some of Luke 2 earlier this evening and this children's story helped the scriptures to make more sense to her.

She was very interested in the story and so I took her downstairs to look at each of our nativities. I pointed out how baby Jesus was in a basket with straw. No bed. And there was Mary (who she calls married) and Jesus' earthly father Joseph. And the wisemen each holding a present for Jesus. She loved all of the animals too. It was such a great teaching moment and for the first time this christmas season we really caught the true christmas spirit together.

The very sad thing is that this book (with Barbara Cooney as illustrator) is being sold from $250-$40. So we'll read it as much as we can until we have to give it back to the library :)

***UPDATE*** I tracked down a copy on amazon from a seller for around five dollars. WEWW HEWW!

Simple Christmas

A friend of mine shared this phrase with me. I loved it! I try to do homemade Christmas for my kids and family but it's hard to do just homemade. I liked this idea even more.

"Something to wear, something to read, something you want, something you need."