True confession: When my two oldest kids were little, I read aloud to them three to five hours every day. (Well, some of it was devotions and bedtime stories with their daddy too.) My husband worked twelve to thirteen hour days, and I had several small children. So I read. And read. And read.
Through the years, our reading time went down to two to four hours a day. And we all look back fondly on those days—even my thirty-four and thirty year olds still talk about all of that read aloud time. And how wonderful it was to have that much time to read and learn together.
Some of our favorite readings were definitely Christmas stories, traditions, song books, collections, and more. We even increased our reading time during the holidays (not sure how!)!
My bookshelves are still full of our favorite Christmas stories—and each year when our children, ages eighteen to thirty-four, come to decorate for Christmas and for our Christmas Eve party, we always pull out some of the collections of stories and read one or two aloud.
So it’s only fitting that I pass on some of the titles to young mamas who want great books to read at Christmas time—via The Annotated Christmas Book List for Families!
From the forward:
“Different ones have asked for more read aloud ideas, especially my very favorites, so I thought I would list them by age and by category (i.e. “Bible-related”; traditions; devotional; etc.) with three stars by my “very-most-favorite-if-we-only-read-a-handful-of-christmas-books-this-year-this-would-be-one-ofthem”!
Hope this helps you as you prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ with your sweet children.
Note: Many of the books on this list make for wonderful devotionals for anybody—not just for read alouds!
Key:
★★★Wouldn’t want to go a Christmas without it
★★Great
★Good enough for my list! 🙂
Note: I have included “out of print” ones because you can often pick them up used or at the library.”
Feel free to pass the link to this list along. I would love to bless many families with our amazing Christmas book list.
Love and hope,
Donna
Click on the picture below to download your FREE copy of The Annotated Christmas Book List 🙂
