We have never really had a Christmas tradition as such – we tend to do the usual things that most families do such as making a Christmas cake, decorating the tree together one evening and cooking a turkey on Christmas day. As the children have got older and we have welcomed new additions to our family, we have wanted to do something a bit more, something we can introduce as a family tradition, that means something to us.
So we chose a book advent.
Now I know this isn’t unique to our family and that other do it too, but it’s not something you see every day, and we felt we could add our own twist to it. A lot of people choose Christmas or seasonal themed books for this, whereas we decided to go for books that could be read all year round, not just at this time of the year. We tried to include a variety of books that all the children could share together, as we didn’t have the time or resources to create a book advent for all 4 of them!
So after a bit of browsing Amazon, The Book People and other book companies, we had a selection of truly lovely books that we think the children will enjoy. With the help of our Dobbies Christmas reindeer, we spent an evening wrapping the books, and labelling each one with a number, relating to days in December.
We can’t wait to share our children’s joy as they discover a new book ready for the bedtime story every day. They may well have a traditional chocolate advent calendar too (because who doesn’t love a bit of chocolate now and again?), but we hope this book advent will also become a yearly tradition. We hope it will encourage a love of reading, a love of sharing books together, and happy memories of Christmas time as a family.
Do you have a family tradition at this time of year? I would love to hear about the ways in which you celebrate Christmas and Advent, and may even be inspired further!
For further inspiration at this time of year, visit the Dobbies tradition page and be inspired! This is a collaborative post.
im doing something like that this year too. I have been doing the elf on the shelf for 3 years now and this year my son has found out about Santa being NOT REAL *sob* he’s only 7! Anyway I said I would still do stuff for him and have bought a few things in already but I’m not as organised as you, I have bought some books and new DVDs and Xmas activitys to do, I’m trying to get him into reading more these days . I didn’t think he would real a full book every night as its bigger books he reads now, so I changed it up a bit too, where did you get your numbered stickers from please?
Pauline x
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You can get the stickers from eBay- just search for advent stickers
Those wrapped books look gorgeous, what a wonderful tradition! x
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