Holiday Stories to choose from!
Inspire and have fun!
In lots of homes in the world, it is a holiday season....
Lots of people celebrate...Christmas, Chanukah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, snow! and more.
My family of origin combined fun, family traditions, and a sacred attention to love and stories, and gifts for others.
Our celebrations when I was young happened to centre around the story of baby Jesus, songs of reverence, sitting in a quiet church filling with joyful songs (and wearing a new fluffy hat)...
And Santa Claus, a very favorite story...full of magic. Stockings and excitement on Christmas day, good food and good company.
My own little family celebrated in much the same way, but our experiences of the sacred and magical felt universal and inclusive.
We had friends of various faiths and traditions.
Nature was a focus for our family, with time spent outdoors-on the ski hill, skating on ponds, walks in the forest, noticing animals and their tracks in the fresh snow, and watching for the birds that stayed in the cold winter.
Santa was at the top of our tree, symbolizing love and caring and fun. And we had deerhide hearts and stars with bead adornments, carvings of loons and bells, along with our sparkly balls and lights.
But we celebrated Winter Solstice too, with candles, blessings, and a circle of friends and family.
We had favorite books, from The Christmas Story with beautiful illustrations, to classics like Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and The Night Before Christmas (one with drawings by Mary Engelbreit), to new stories like The Twelve Days of Christmas North, filled with eagles, salmon, and wolves (and a blue grouse in a spruce tree).
I read my children stories from My Christmas Treasury, A Giant Little Golden Book, inscribed inside in 1955 from my Grandad and Nana. Tattered from years of love...
I still buy beautiful Christmas and celebration books yearly and some quickly become favorites. Where did I get The Cobweb Christmas? A story with little spiders at the heart of the Christmas magic? I do remember hunting down Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas, when she became a favorite character for a group of fashionable little children with a love for adornment and new vocabulary....
And reading about the traditions of other cultures and faiths became a yearly discussion and the inspiration for new stories, skits, music, and art to share.
These books we read all have candles, a universal symbol of light. It is good to have traditions, celebrations, and symbols that everyone can share in, and be a part of...family, friends, food, light, and the blessed Earth and stars above....
So, some favorite books to share... Most have links so you can explore them on Amazon!
The Night Before Christmas
The Night Before Christmas is a lovely imaginative tale...a favorite for children. This version (there are so many) is illustrated with the beautiful coloured drawings of Mary Engelbreit. This means it is whimsical and full of details. So it is as much fun to look at and talk about the pictures as it is to read the story. This one stays on display on a bookshelf for the holiday season. Highly recommended!
Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas
Fancy Nancy is a favorite character for some discriminating and fancy-loving fans. Nancy loves everything fluffy, sparkly, and bejeweled. Christmas time is perfect because the whole house gets fancy inside and out. Nancy also loves to learn and use new, fancy words, like aroma, heirloom and delectable! Ooh-la-la!
Christmas With Teddy Bear
A baby Board Book! This one is so good, both story and pictures, that it will last for years, interest wise, and sturdiness too. 12 things to do to be ready for Christmas, from building a snowman, to singing carols, to hanging stockings and waiting for Santa. This sweet teddy bear is kept company by his family and a little cat...
Chanukah
Chanukah traditions, for the child who is a little older. This is a part of a series by Rookie Read-Aloud Holidays. It is perfect for reading to a younger child, or for an older child, 6-9, to learn from or to read to a little one. At the back there are pictures with vocabulary words to learn, like menorah, dreidel, and temple. It gives the child the world knowledge to write stories and use the vocabulary.
A Christmas Carol Pop-up
This fanciful but traditional edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is a delight. Although our children, young and old, love its beautifully engineered and amazing pop-up pages, this book was gifted to the father of our house, a Charles Dickens fan. Not only does it have 6 intricate pop-up pages to wonder at, it also holds 6 small pocket books within. The first one tells the life of Charles Dickens, and the other five tell the parts of the story. We put this one on a high shelf, grown up supervision is required!
Giant Little Golden Book Christmas Treasury
Imagine a Golden book first published in 1947 is still available! 23 stories and poems to enjoy...with favorites like song Away in the Manger, story The Little Tree, and poem Don't Look...
Don't look in the closets,
Or under the beds,
Or in any mysterios nook....
Christmas
Christmas traditions, for the child who is a little older. This is a part of a series by Rookie Read-Aloud Holidays. It is perfect for reading to a younger child, or for an older child, 6-9, to learn from or to read to a little one. At the back there are pictures with vocabulary words to learn, like candy canes, ornaments, and Santa Claus. It gives the child the world knowledge to write stories and use the vocabulary.
Diwali
Diwali traditions, for the child who is a little older. This is a part of a series by Rookie Read-Aloud Holidays. It is perfect for reading to a younger child, or for an older child, 6-9, to learn from or to read to a little one. At the back there are pictures with vocabulary words to learn, like diya, mandir, and rangolis. It gives the child the world knowledge to write stories and use the vocabulary.
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa traditions, for the child who is a little older. This is a part of a series by Rookie Read-Aloud Holidays. It is perfect for reading to a younger child, or for an older child, 6-9, to learn from or to read to a little one. At the back there are pictures with vocabulary words to learn, like kinara, zawadi, and unity cup. It gives the child the world knowledge to write stories and use the vocabulary.
The Cobweb Christmas
This little book is about an auntie, Tante, in a little cabin in the woods. She gets ready for Christmas every year, "Time to clean for Christmas", and cleans until all the dust and cobwebs are gone. But this year as she sits to wait for Christmas magic, it comes in a very unexpected way!
A Small Miracle
by Peter Collington
-a wordless story
The Twelve Days of Christmas North by author Lois Barber and illustrator Carl Chaplin
Sorry I don't have a link to it on Amazon...
This is a wonderful book that may not be available anymore. It only came up in images when I entered the name Carl Chaplin, the illustrator. It was published by Northern Times Press in 1978. We had a lot of fun singing it, creating art for it, and performing it in Christmas concerts here in the north land of Canada! Children here can identify with it, the spruce tree, the salmon, the grizzly bear and wolves, perhaps more than the traditional version....
Cobweb Christmas: The Tradition of Tinsel
I think this is a new edition, but not sure if there are changes. This old woman looks after everyone, animals and children, but longs for Christmas magic that is not of her own making.... Who could imagine that the little spiders she sweeps away could bring her the Christmas miracle she longs for. And a new tradition is born.
Peter Spier's Christmas
-another wordless story!
This is a new book for me. It has a nativity scene featured in it, involved in a magical and wondrous act of kindness. This is a "beautiful and satisfying tale" involving an old starving woman ready to help and set things right, despite what has happened to her.
This Christmas book has been a part of our family for a long time. It's delightful, funny and invites you to spend a long time looking at alllll the details. Satisfying in its ability to convey a story with a real-life ending. Christmas lean up and all!
Is it true it's out of print? There seem to be copies available...
The Night Before Christmas
I have no Amazon link but purchsed this book at a Chapter's/Indigo store in the last couple of years.
Here is The Night Before Christmas story again, this time Illustrated by Katy Jackson-and at the back of it is a pop-up advent calendar! The illustrations are lovely. And I love to offer kids different illustrators. It creates a great discussion and talk of favorites. Sometimes we will even try a picture ourselves, done in the same styles...
Same book...this shows the Advent Calendar open at the back of the story.
This advent calendar is like the old ones...find the number with a picture behind it. However the 3 dimensions in this one make it all the more special. And finding and opening the little pictures actually help to decorate the walls and trees and lay the table... This is a lovely way to inspire the ability to be patient and enjoy the anticipation of waiting for something good.