It’s Day 11 of the 21 Days to a Simple Christmas Challenge! Christmas wouldn’t be complete without reading some wonderful Christmas stories and books!
Personally, I’m reading through Ann Voskamp’s book, The Greatest Gift, this season. It’s beautiful, inspiring, and convicting.
And then we always check out a lot of Christmas books from the library. Here are a few of our favorites (most of these should be available at your local library):
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The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
If you have younger children, it’s fun to gather a basket-full of Christmas read-alouds and plan a daily time to read for 10-15 minutes. Let your children choose from the basket to make it more engaging for them.
Want to make it even more exciting? wrap up the books and let them unwrap a few each day.
What are some of your family’s favorite read-aloud Christmas books? I’d love to find new ones to add to our list of favorites!
Day 11 Project
1. Read chapter 7 from Celebrating & Savoring a Simple Christmas if you didn’t get a chance to read it yet. (Did you sign up for your free copy yet? If not, click here and fill out the form to be emailed a copy.)
2. Pick 1-2 Christmas-related books to read this year personally. If you have children, pick at least a few books to read together as a family this Christmas season.
4. Come back around 8 p.m. tonight where I’ll share a few of the Christmas books we’ll be reading over the next two weeks.
One of our more recent favorites is Cock-a-Doodle Christmas. It’s a cute story about Harold, a rooster on a farm in Bethlehem, who can’t seem to crow loud enough to wake the other animals each morning, until one night when a special family spends the night in their stable. It’s really sweet.
Can I make a technical web suggestion? When you post a long list of books, I think it would be more logical to put the title ABOVE the book image since when you’re scrolling down you would see the title, then the image? It’s confusing to my brain to see the image of the book, then the title; I tend to mentally couple the image with the wrong title. Just a suggestion. 🙂 Thanks, as always, for your wonderful site! Merry Christmas!
Thanks for the suggestion — I always look below a picture for the title/description, so that’s why I do that here. I guess it’s the way my brain is wired. 🙂
A really great one to read is The autobiography of Santa Claus, by Jeff Guinn. It has 25 chapters and is not only full of history but magic and faith, and the true spirit and reason for Christmas. I have read it every year for the past 15 years and it never gets old. Also the story of the miraculous staircase is another fantastic story to read. I read both to my kids now, and they love it.
Crystal
Thank you for this series. I have been reading Ann’s book and understand the conviction. I also have the little golden book The Christmas Story. We have put it in our Christmas reading basket for the last 25 years. Just seeing the cover brings back warm memories of when the kids were young.
May you and your family have a Merry and Peaceful Christmas.
SLS
We bought ‘Santa’s Beard is Soft and Warm’ for our oldest child when he was a toddler, he will be 34 tomorrow, and our five children wore that book out. We still have it but it has been repaired on every page and it is tied together with a piece of elastic because binding is completely gone. Our 15 month old grandson goes to the basket and brings me the book to read every time he has come over since we got out the Christmas books. I do not know if it is still in print but it is certainly worth buying for the little ones if you do not object to Santa.
THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER is a great read. I used to share it with my junior and senior high English classes. The Little House on the Prairie book dealing with the blizzard and Christmas… I’m thinking it might be The Long Winter. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI by O. Henry. * This is a great book to challenge your family with some kind of sacrificial act they could do for Jesus’ birthday gift… shoveling a neighbor’s walk, helping someone in need, etc.
One fun thing to do with The Mitten is to use a white sheet or blanket and pretend it’s a a mitten… the kids then act out the story, their favorite part, of course, all running out from underneath at the end! I did this with my daughter’s kindergarten class a few years ago and they just kept wanting to do it over and over and over… if doing it at home, stuffed animals can serve as some of the animals and your kids can be the others.
What a great idea!
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. When I was a kid, my grandmother read it to me. Now that she’s gone, it’s my turn to read it. My son is too young (only 4 months) but I read it to my college friend one year, and he was so enraptured, he went out and got his own copy.
Also, One Wintry Night, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Little Lost Angel. 🙂 I put them out every year as part of my Christmas display that I call Storybook Land. It’s a table with propped books and items belonging to the books beside them. I have a little stuffed rabbit on a tiny rocking horse for Velveteen Rabbit, two dolls in Victorian clothes for A Christmas Carol, a tiny angel doll for Little Lost Angel, and so on. It’s by far one of my favorite Christmas displays. 🙂