I remember my favorite Christmas book when I was a child. My brother and I would fight take turns scratching the smelly sticker on the page. Anyone remember which book I’m talking about?
The Sweet Smell of Christmas (afflink) is a cute book that brings back many memories for me as a child. Though it doesn’t focus on the real reason for Christmas (aka Santa is in there), many of things the little bears did were things our family did to get ready for Christmas. Plus we thought the scratch-and-sniff stickers were cool!
A couple years ago I adopted the tradition of purchasing at least one new-to-us Christmas book to be read in December. This year we’re up to 15 books. Many people who have this tradition in their homes wrap each book up and place under the tree (or special box) so that the children pick one book out a day. It is used like a book count-down calendar.
I’ll admit it– I hate wrapping presents so wrapping each book just wasn’t going to happen. I store all our Christmas books in a wrapped box. This is last year’s picture, but the box survived the packing and still looks the same. My kids and I enjoy looking at the books all through the month. I like the “surprise” element of individually wrapped books though, so I thought about how I could add the surprise while still knowing what books we would be doing. Makes sense right? Plus I wanted a way to document the book-making memories we were creating and find a way to include books we read or listened to on the iPad. So I came up with a new system that we are going to try out this year.
What were some of your favorite Christmas books as a child?
Part 2: Christmas Book Organizing — The Christmas Book Book
We are doing the book countdown this year for the first time and Sammy is loving it! I loved Twas the Night Before Christmas 🙂
I love the idea of doing a Christmas book box. I don't think I would be organized enough to do a book countdown. If the books were out, the kids would be reading them all over and over until Christmas.
I did have it together enough this year to begin gathering all of our Christmas books together and I have just the perfect basket to put them in.
We have several really great favorites. One is Apple Tree Christmas by Trinka Hakes Noble. Another is The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston.
Our oldest is 19 and our youngest is 8, and we have been collecting Christmas books for the 25 years of our marriage. I love going through our box each year and rediscovering old favorites.
i really can't think of any special Christmas books so I better start this tradition with my God-daughter this year. She is only 3 months old but she does enjoy looking at bright colors in the books I have shown her so far. This book looks really cute, I can't wait to get it for her:)
Reading favorite Christmas books is our family tradition. A favorite moment was gpa reading the first book 2011, 'Bear Stays Up For Christmas' to our little ones after tree was decorated. So many
favorites, it hard to mention just 1.
I absolutely adored "The Sweet Smell of Christmas" – it gives me shivers just seeing the cover on here! I've still got it now, but can't really share it with my daughter, as the smells have worn off years ago.