Unwrapping Christmas

Our hands-on approach to our children's education has given us inspiration in crafting our own family Christmas traditions that focus on the spirit of the occasion.

• During our first year of homeschooling our preschooler, we incorporated art and gift-giving by making our own home-made gift wrappers. (Want to know about what preschool homeschooling is and how you can do it too? Click here.)

• Last year, we had a meaningful Advent creating our Jesse Tree. We read Bible stories  and hung our symbolic ornament for each of the days of Advent while singing Christmas carols.

• We also discovered about the tradition of luminarias. We lit up a path with lamps made of brown paper bags and candles to signify our welcoming of Jesus in our home and hearts.

A Book A Day

I also saw around the web last year another activity that I had wanted to do – unwrapping and reading one Christmas book every day until Christmas Eve. It was already too late then to gather the appropriate titles, so I vowed to start the tradition this year. 

I’m wrapping our books now and looking forward to cuddling nightly with my little ones as we read. The books that I’ve chosen for our family are mostly about the story and spirit of Christmas – though I’ve included some about Santa Claus too, just for fun! 

I plan to start on the first of December. We will pile our wrapped Christmas books high and will (im)patiently wait for our night time surprise. It will be like unwrapping Christmas, one book at a time, relishing the details of the story from different angles as the much-awaited date nears.

And these are some of our books! I will definitely be adding to our collection through the years.

• B is for Bethlehem: A Christmas Alphabet by Isabel Wilner
• Books by Catholic author Tomie de Paola: The Night of Las Posadas, Merry Christmas Strega Nona!, The Legend of Old Befana, The Legend of the Poinsettia, The Clown of God
• How Many Miles to Bethlehem? by Kevin Crossley-Holland
• Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins
• The Christmas Path: A Legend of the Luminarias by Sue Wright
• The Christmas Story by Jane Werner Watson
• We Were There by Eve Bunting
• The First Night by B. G. Hennessy
• The Story of Mary by Barry Martinson
• Silent Night (a sing along book)
• Christmas is Coming!
• Mary's Baby by Jane Chapman
• The Christmas Alphabet by Robert Sabuda
• The Stable Where Jesus Was Born by Rhonda Green
• 'Twas The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore - a classic!

Many of these books are available at our shop for you to start collecting Christmas books to start a new family tradition of your own too! 

Make magic!

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