17th December, 2021
Bookish Stuff: Christmas books
I recently heard about a great idea that I plan to "appropriate" for our own home. It’s about Christmas and it’s about books. The perfect combination if you ask me, so this will be a great addition to our already established tradition of Jolabokflod.
The gist of it all is that each year you buy your child a Christmas or holiday themed book, and you write them a note inside with the year as well as a short personal message. You also buy a so-called "house" book, into which you also jot the year. The idea is that when the kid is grown up and has a family of their own, they will take their collection of Christmas books to their own home to share with their family, and the house books will be at your house to enjoy with your grandchildren (if we have some). If you do this for a few years you will have a lot of beautiful and special books to enjoy throughout the holiday season.
I love this idea! The Christmas books are supposed to come out the evening of the day the Christmas tree goes up. And they should go back into storage once the tree is taken down. This way they are clearly marked as special and will be treated as such. Christmas book night, i.e. the evening the books are brought out again, may then become one of your kid’s favourite nights of the year. They will love browsing through the stacks of books and reminiscing about Christmas past. When choosing the books, you can try to match them with something special about the year, or simply an interest the kid has at the time. Looking at them together in the following years will be like walking back in time with them.
I wish I had read about this brilliant idea earlier because now I'm unfortunately seven years behind, but I believe it's still a great tradition to establish at any time. A happy bookish Christmas!
(Photo credit: GettyImages)