"At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year."
-- Thomas Tusser
Ever since W was a baby, my kids have received lots and lots of books. I mean LOTS. We could probably open our own little library by now. And while I have gotten rid of a few over the years (some that were just obviously not favorites or we somehow accumulated but weren't too interested in) we still have the overwhelming majority of them stored away. These books are at three different houses and even more in storage. Someday, hopefully, I'll be able to share them with my grandchildren.
So probably for about 10 years now, we have been doing this pseudo advent calendar activity, by unwrapping a book every night to read. (So that means I have been doing this since before Pinterest.) I think a lot of it started when my in-laws won a raffle full of children's books, and there were a number of Christmas books in there. When the boys were little, it started out as a great way to keep them out of presents since they had something they could unwrap every night.
At this point we have way more than 25 Christmas books. I have taken out several, especially the baby books, but we still have more than enough, so I usually leave out the ones that the boys haven't really expressed an interest in. However, there are a few standouts, which we can't wait to read each year.
This year's favorite, and the one they started looking for the first night, is definitely Jan Brett's "Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?" The boys carefully compared sizes of the wrapped books in order to find this one, but it still took a couple of nights. And everyone was still as happy as always reading this book. As always with all the Jan Brett books, there is always something extra special that you find in the gorgeous illustrations.
Other favorites include:
Even our elves enjoy looking at the books.
This is a tradition I highly recommend getting on board with.
From my board "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas"
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