Hands down this is the BEST Christmas tradition that I have found and we have many! Our family celebrates St. Nicholas Day each year on December 6th and each year our family is given a nice, hardcover book.
This is a Christmas tradition that can be started at any time, there is no reason that it has to start at year one instead of year 8 or any other year. The book could be from Santa, or your elf on the shelf, from you, or even pick a book out as a family. You could give a book to each of your grandchildren each year, or even give the same book to each family. The possibilities are endless. Make it your own.
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This Christmas tradition started as a fluke in our family. I was shopping and saw a nice, hardcover book of “The Night Before Christmas” and thought it would be the perfect addition to newborn Eliza’s library. When we got home I added her hand and footprints and called it a day. That was it.
Why this is Simply the Best Christmas Tradition for Families
I’m not even the slightest bit sarcastic when I say that this is my favorite part of Christmas. We have used them as a Christmas countdown. We read them before bed time and during the day. It is a staple, a predictable part of the season.
It is so much fun watching the kids compare their hand prints from the year prior or to their siblings at the same age. I love reminiscing about what the “most loved” gift was each year.
These serve as a mini scrapbook for each season. It is so quick, I can EASILY finish each book within an hour. I use what I have and am able to make it as simple or complex as each year allows. It allows us to see a progression of our family growing each year during the same month.
I’m not going to lie, but sometimes I daydream about reading these books to my grandchildren at the same age my children were when we created them. I think it would be so much fun to be able to compare four-year old grandchild to four-year old child both in hand print sizes, Christmas wishes and activities.
What to Include in Each Book
Just as the collection of books grew, so did the Christmas tradition and what I added to each book. We began to include a picture of the kids sitting on Santa’s lap and our Christmas card, and went back to our very first book and added that in, too.
Now the books are different every single year. If the book has a theme or activity that we are able to do, I will add pictures of that too. Typically, I include these items before and after the story on the cover pages but not always. It’s fair game to sneak a few things inside the stories as well.
I just started to add the year the book was gifted to the front and to the spine. My hope that if something would happen to me and someone was cleaning out our house they would easily be able to identify that these books are something special. That and I can easily know if one is missing!
Here are a few of the things I have added to the books throughout the years. Not every item is in every book, this keeps the process flexible!
- Hand and footprints of each child- I often turn these into something Christmas related- like a tree, gingerbread, cardinal, etc.
- A picture on Santa’s lap
- The favorite gift given to each child
- A recipe for a favorite Christmas cookie
- Information about Christmas Traditions passed down from my late husband and I’s family
- Family pictures both immediate and extended- Make sure the parents are in the pictures!! I didn’t do this from the get go and regret it!
- Individual kids pictures
- A hand-drawn family picture by one of the kids
- Signatures from each child
- The year of the book to the front cover and to the spine to keep them easy to find
- A picture of your Christmas tree or any other decorations that have meaning or will bring a smile in years to come. If there is a story with it, be sure it add it!
- Literally, anything else that reminds you of your family and this time of year
Our Favorite Christmas Books
As the years went on and our collection grew. I have scoured the internet, Pinterest, libraries, and surveyed my friends to find the very best Christmas books to give each year.
Towards the beginning, I thought I wanted to find books that matched the kid’s interest to that year, and to some point, I still do. But I did not realize how important it was to get a book that I loved as well. These books are read dozens of times each December and there is nothing worse than reading a book you don’t love on repeat! The books I pick lean towards the classics as opposed to a brand-new published that year.
The size of the book is also important. As a mother of four, I need a book big in size. Not the number of pages, but the size of the area to put four hand prints. If you are just starting out with a newborn, it may be wise to pick the books that are smaller and leave the bigger sized books for when your babies turn into big kids with big hands.
Our Personal Collection
These are the books that we have in our personal collection, shown in the order that they were added to our collection.
The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
Margret and H.A. Rey’s Merry Christmas Curious George
This was the first year I added picture of the kids on Santa’s lap
Room for a Little One- A Christmas Tale by Martin Waddell.
This book is small in size and would be a great way to start your collection.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
This year I added a copy of our Christmas card and the wish lists to Santa. I later changed the list portion to their favorite gift.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May
This is the classic story, not the movie version. If I were to pick again, I’m not sure which way I would lean. The book itself is much bigger than the Little Golden Book version.
I feel like the Rudolph year is the year I started to take these books to the next level. We turned their hand and foot prints into Rudolphs. Change to their favorite gift given and added their own handwriting in there. This is where we took this Christmas tradition the the next level. But it’s still relatively simple and completed in very little time.
The Legend of St. Nicholas- A Story of Christmas Giving by Dandi Daley Mackall
We celebrate Saint Nicholas Day each year and a local church sponsored an event about the meaning behind the Saint Nicholas tradition. It was a bunch of fun so this was the perfect book for 2015.
This year, Eliza had her letter to Santa in the newspaper so I added that tidbit. This is the year where it turned into more of a Christmas scrapbook and became important to pick a book that was big in size!
Mr.Willowby’s Christmas Tree by Robert Barry
Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree is probably my favorite story to read. It is a sweet, rhyming story about Mr. Willowby who purchased a Christmas tree that was just too big for the space he had. He cut off the top and it goes to a series of animals, each cutting off a smaller piece for the the top until it ends up with a mouse family inside of Mr. Willowby’s house. I love this book!
In this book, I made a list of all of the things that we do each year to celebrate the season. My hope is that one of these items will help the kids remember something that they may have otherwise forgotten.
The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth
Ahhh 2017. This is my family’s only Christmas with all 6 of us alive and present. Greta was born in 2017 and John was killed in 2018. We should have had a family photoshoot this Christmas but I really didn’t know that it would be our only one. But, I thought I had years and years left. I was wrong, that wasn’t our story.
We had been making gingerbread men for years by this point, so it was fun to grab a few pictures of the process. I wish I would have included the recipe that we always used because I never bothered to write it down. I pinned it and thought it was saved forever but that website went away and so did my recipe!
For The Gingerbread Man, I choose the classic version in a full size book. In this version, the fox does catch the gingerbread and eats him. There is some controversy on this if kids are mature enough to not have a happy ending. I guess, in hindsight that was a good lesson for them to learn.
The Night Tree by Eve Bunting
2018. The first Christmas without John. It was different in every way possible. It was hard. It was messy. Our community and family made it special.
This year, St Nicholas brought a pine tree and planted it in the yard while we were at school. We named it our ‘Daddy Tree’, St Nicholas also brought us the book Night Tree . This story is about a family that decorates a tree in the forest each year with sweet treats to provide a Christmas for the animals. We started this tradition, I wrote an entire post about it. This is probably the most bittersweet book in our collection.
The Broken Ornament by Tony DiTerlizzi
Sometimes in life things break. But they can still be beautiful. This was the theme of the story and honestly, the message I’m trying to instill in my kids about our lives. Our story is messy. It isn’t the way that we want it to be, but we can still have a good life, just not the one that we wanted.
Christmas 2019 was an overwhelming time for me. And honestly, I went back and completed the book well after the season was over. Know what, it is just fine. I knew the things that I wanted to include and tucked them away. When it was time, I added it to the book. No harm. No foul. It’s never too late to start something like this!
2020.
What will book will we add to our collection? I’m not sure yet. But, I for one, cannot wait to see what St Nicholas shows up with!
In the Blink of a Fly is led by Leah Fullenkamp. Leah is the mother of four young children. Their lives were tragically altered after a crash caused by distracted driving killed her husband and her children’s father. This website is the tale of them learning to live again and serves as a passion project to help prevent distracted driving and this tragedy from happening to someone else.
