Christ Centered Christmas: Christmas Books to Share

Organization is a big part of being able to keep your traditions centered on Christ. Every year begin preparing for Christmas by buying an inexpensive notebook to jot down all ideas and plans with an overall view of focusing more on the Savior. This can be a three-ring binder, a composition book, or a simple spiral book. You can decorate it with your scrapbook paper stash to make it look festive. You want something durable because you will be seeing a lot of this notebook in the coming weeks. A small notebook is easy to carry around with you so it is readily accessible for when the spirit hits you.

The Christmas planning notebook may be divided into sections such as:
*Budget
*Gift lists
*Menus, recipes, and baking ideas
*Calendar
*Christ centered traditions
*Spiritual thoughts and ideas for family lessons or study
*Service
*Cards and letters to write
*Ideas for children and family activities
*Service ideas and plans
*Anything else you need to write down.

Start organizing sections in the notebook early, even before Halloween, and add ideas and plans as you think of them. The entire purpose of this Christmas planning book is to help your family have the time and energy to focus more of your efforts and time together on the most important part of Christmas, the Savior.

This notebook will be your 'brains' for the next few weeks and next year you will have a great resource to draw from.

Now that you have your notebook and you are well on the way to being organized, we want to share with you some of our ideas and traditions for having a Christ Centered Christmas. The posts on this blog will provide you with various ideas that you can file away in your notebook and utilize to make your holiday Christ centered.

PLEASE SHARE any ideas you have with us. Either comment on an existing post or email Sarah at famtreeclimber AT hotmail DOT com.

We are excited to share the true meaning of Christmas together!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Christmas Books to Share

I remember helping mom put out the Christmas decorations and my favorite part was when Dad would heft the large box of Christmas books out of the storage room. These books were special because we only broke them out once a year. We would read this books together at bedtime throughout the season in place of our usual storybooks. This is a tradition I would like to establish as I am starting my own family, but I'm not worried about buying a whole bunch of books at once. You can build a collection with one new book a year.

The following is a list of beautiful Christmas stories you might consider adding to your own collection.

Picture Books:
Dozen Silk Diapers by Melissa Kajpust

Christmas Oranges by Linda Bethers
The Gift of the Magi
A Dress for Ellen by Thomas S. Monson
Christmas Trolls, Wild Christmas Reindeer, Christmas Trolls by Jan Brett
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechoski
The Story of the Three Trees
The Christmas Visitor by Annaliese Lussert
Santa Mouse by Micheal Brown
This is the Star by Joyce Dunbar
Carl's Christmas by Alexandra Day

We also enjoy books about how other cultures celebrate Christmas as well as books with illustrations from various cultures depicting the nativity of Christ.

Chapter Books:
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Does your family have a favorite book to read around Christmas time?

1 comment:

Frizz said...: We do this too. Last year, in the months leading up to Christmas I bought a bunch of Christmas kids books used from Amazon,(two or three per paycheck). Now I'll just buy one or two really special books each year. Most of our books center on Christ, but a handful are more about family.

I want to do the same thing with videos.; December 3, 2013 at 11:49 AM

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We are two sisters, Sarah and Anna, and our Mom, Ruth working together to compile and share traditions that are centered around Christ.

We love traditions that bring us closer as a family and help us remember our Savior at Christmas. Our family has enjoyed many of the ideas listed on this site and we have many happy memories resulting from the traditions established through the years.

We also love trying new things and searching through the creative ideas of others on the internet. We hope to be able to bring all these ideas together to share the true meaning of Christmas, our Savior.

There are a lot of resources yet to be added. Check us out often!