5 Christmas Traditions All About Books & Reading → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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We’ve been talking about the importance of traditions and reading on the podcast in the past few weeks. Today, we are combining those themes and focusing on great Christmas traditions that are all about reading.

S2E15 – What You Need to Know about the Christian Creeds – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are talking about the high-church confessional documents and why you should engage with them. No matter what denomination you belong to, these confessional texts – like Christian creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and liturgies – have been incredibly influential in the history of the Church. We need to wrestle with what they say and determine how it fits in with our own personal statement of faith. Today, we are going to talk about why you should read these texts, and then, turn our focus to the Christian creeds in particular. Read more on the blog: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-christian-creeds/ Get a PDF copy of the Christian Creeds here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.kit.com/d080819cc1 Get the Doctrine and Theology Cheat Sheet Here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/bd897d28d0 Get a list of the names of God here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/43d2d5cf6b Get a copy of our personal statement of faith creation guide here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/we-believe-your-personal-statement-of-faith-workbook-pdf-download/ Get “Building Our Foundations: 10 Week Study” here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/building-our-foundations-11-week-systematic-theology-book-bible-study/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Creating a love of reading at a young age is vital for creating lifelong learners… and lifelong readers (though really isn’t that the same thing?). Traditions are one of the key ways that we create habits centered around certain points in our lives. When we create a tradition, we’ve automated something, and we’ve created a habit that we can turn back to again and again. So, why not create traditions that achieve a goal that we want for ourselves and our children: to read more and love reading? These traditions will create warm memories centered around books and stories while keeping things fresh even after a decade of doing the tradition.

As we head into the advent season, there are some great Christmas traditions that you could do to cultivate a love for reading in your life and in your home.

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Create a book advent calendar.

If you have young kids at home, you can create a book advent calendar by gathering 25 picture books and opening one a day to read at a certain time. These books could stay under your Christmas tree or in a special basket. One way to make this special is to wrap each of the books individually and then number them. To make this more affordable, you could wrap books you already own or even library books. I know that we’ve been collecting a couple of picture books each year since my son was born, so we don’t have 25 yet. I’ve included a few Christmas movies in our advent calendar and some books from previous years. Doing a book advent calendar is a great way to automate reading some of your favorite Christmas books. We almost always read the book right after we open it, which means we are reading many more books than if I just kept them in a basket and read them whenever I remembered to do it. As your kids get older, you could work on a few longer chapter books and short stories. Just remember that you’ll have to plan out your calendar so that you are able to get through longer books before Christmas.

Add in gifting a book to your Christmas gifts.

Gift-giving is probably the most universal of the Christmas traditions. There’s a common saying going around for what you should include in your gifts so that you don’t overspend on Christmas gifts or just get a bunch of toys that you don’t really need.

It says that you can get the following:

Something you want
Something you need
Something to wear
Something to read
Something to share
Something to do

In this list is something to read. I love that. So every Christmas you can get one or two titles to add to your personal library and read throughout the year. This is a great way to be intentional about your gift-giving, to diversify the gifts (so they don’t just center around toys), and to minimize the pressure to give more and more.

Create your own Jolabokaflod.

This is an Icelandic tradition that has become popular in homeschool circles recently. Iceland boasts a large literacy rate, a large publishing industry, and a culture that still regularly reads lots of books. Every Christmas Eve, they exchange books as a present and spend the evening reading and drinking hot chocolate. You could even do this on a different day of the month and incorporate reading aloud into the experience. Food and reading always go great together. The Read Aloud Revival podcast by Sarah McKenzie has a great episode on some more ideas for creating this tradition.

Pick a book that you want to read aloud each year as a tradition.

Just like I used to read A Christmas Carol every year, you could also pick your own favorite Christmas story to read each year at a certain time. It could be a novel that you listen to, a book you read aloud with your spouse or a favorite picture book to read on a particular day. What a special Christmas Traditions! Time spent reading aloud connects you not only to the story that you are reading but also to the people you are reading with. It’s one of the best ways to build a family culture. Some books that have built-in traditions already surrounding them include:

The Polar Express while drinking hot chocolate and wearing pajamas.
The Legend of St. Nicholas and celebrating St. Nicholas Day
A Christmas Carol on the nights leading up to Christmas
Night Tree and decorating your own Night Tree

Do Christmas School.

If you are a homeschooling family – or even a public or private school family who wants to add some books, reading, and activities to your afternoons and weekends, a great way to add in Christmas traditions around reading is to pause ‘normal’ school and do Christmas school during the Advent season. There are some great curriculums out there that include all the academics in addition to building time in your schedule for some sweet Christmas traditions and memories. Some Christmas School options include the annual Christmas school from ReadAloudRevival. This option switches up what they are reading each year and is geared towards all ages as long as you differentiate for the ages of your children. Another great option is Christmas School from Gentle+Classical Press. This is the Christmas school that we are doing this year in my family. It includes great options for reading and ideas for teaching both the Christmas story and vital theological truths in a gentle, yet rich, way. If you want to do Christmas school with a nature study focus, Unearthing Wonder from the Peaceful Press is a good option.

What Christmas traditions do you currently have? Do any of them center around reading? I’d love to hear your ideas! Comment below or shoot me an email.

Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating a heart for God.

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5 Christmas Traditions All About Books & Reading

S2E15 – What You Need to Know about the Christian Creeds – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

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