Twelve Days of Christmas Books — Hillside Farmhouse

I was trying to think of a new holiday tradition for our family this year, and we decided to do a Twelve Days of Christmas Books! I ordered (what feels like) a million holiday children’s books, and narrowed it down to twelve favorites. I am not sure if it is just us, but we certainly have our favorite books to read… and our main criteria is always “not annoying to read”. Other important aspects to us in choosing children’s books are illustrations, meaningful messages, and/or books that we know Lily will love (aka any book with a “woooof!”).

We plan to wrap ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in one wrapping paper, and the other eleven books in a different wrapping paper. We will put all of the wrapped books under the little Christmas tree in her room. Starting on December 13th, Lily can choose one book per night to open and read until the night before Christmas she can open the special wrapped book for us to read. Keep in mind that our daughter is 16 months old, so we chose mostly short board books that are age appropriate for her.

My favorite part of this tradition is that we can put all of the books away after Christmas, and pull them out next year to rewrap again. With another little love on the way, it will be sweet to watch Lily grow up reading these books at Christmas, and eventually she can help read them to her little brother too.

A little bonus tradition that was shared to me by one of my sweet followers that we will be doing:

“We started reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve to our first. Every year we write the address where we read it (we moved a lot, or spent the holiday with family), and who read it to whom. 15 years later the book has seen 6 different addresses, 4 kids, and 5 readers (including 2 great-grandparents who aren’t here anymore).

Whatever your tradition is, these will be the things that mean the most to you and yours.”