Thursday, December 4, 2008

Christmas is Coming!!

Two things about this Christmas:

First, we're reading Glenn Beck's book, The Christmas Sweater, as a family. I read a chapter a night. I have high hopes that this book will help us feel the true meaning of Christmas in spades this year.

Second, it is a tradition in our family to spend the Christmas season reading together. We select a story every night (or, for the first 16 nights, a chapter of Beck's book) and me or hubby reads while the children listen. I actually got around to spending some time updating my Christmas Book. The Book is three books now. It began with a binder that we got from one of hubby's sisters many years ago. The binder held stories and poems--24 of them, one for each night of December leading up to Christmas. I have since added stories--so many that the original binder has hemorrhaged into three as I've added songs, recipes, activities, pictures, etc. This year I've collected 6 or 7 pages of quotes, about 10 new stories (including 2 or 3 of mine that I hadn't added before, and an mini-play adaptation of A Christmas Carol.), and 5 or 6 new songs. In addition to the binder, I have a healthy collection of Christmas books from which to choose as well.

I need to buy more page protectors. I don't have NEARLY enough to get them all into the book.

Some of our favorites are:
The Christmas Miracle of Johnathon Toomey
Auntie Claus
Santa Calls
The Gift of the Magi
The Other Wise Man
Helen Steiner Rice's The Christmas Lesson
Longfellow's The Three Kings

And the Christmas quote of the day:

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree."
-Roy L. Smith

1 comment:

Annie said...

I like the Roy Smith quote. Reading aloud to each other sounds like a wonderful tradition. When my son was small, we always read a selection of Christmas stories throughout the season, and always on Christmas Eve.