25 Books for Christmas: A Christmas Family Tradition

Every other year, I put together a list of 25 books to read to the girls. Everyday of December, they open the wrapped book and we read it together. This year, I have added a few special things to our fun tradition and a few tricks to make it a bit easier on me!

25 Wrapped Books Take Forever

Seriously. You would not believe how long it takes to wrap 25 books! Instead of wrapping, I made an assortment of bag books this year. Some bags are small, some are large. It's important to have a variety of sizes.

See the blog post here for instructions on how to make the fabric bags!

Another wonderful option is to put your books in decorative boxes. You can reuse both the fabric bags or boxes each year.

If you aren't much of a seamstress, you can purchase cute fabric gift bags at Walmart.

I wanted to buy cute wooden tags for the bags, but they were super expensive. Instead, I just used an old cardboard box and cut out a tag shape I liked. I had the little wooden numbers for years, so I painted them and glued them on the tags with hot glue! Easy peesy!

Book Ornaments

All the books sit wrapped under a special little Christmas tree upstairs. The tree is kind of bare in the beginning, but that is because each book has a special ornament with it. Once we read the book, the girls can hang the ornament that represents the book onto the tree!

I painted a peg "person" or two for each book. It helps remind them of the main characters in the book! [A little lesson on deciding who the main character or characters is a nice little English lesson, too!]

If you aren't an artist, you can find a special ornament that represents your book and use that for your tree. The ideas are endless!

Our Book List

You may be wondering how on earth we find 25 books about Christmas. We don't! LOL! I tried that one year and it was way too hard. So instead, I have about 5 books that are about Christmas and the rest are books I wanted to add to our library.

I also like to have a little surprise or two. One day, the bag contains 3 coloring books and a package of the girls' favorite Crayola Brush and Detail Dual Tip Markers. On another day, we have a small Lego set for the family to put together. This year, it is a Harry Potter Lego kit. I will read a little bit of the Harry Potter series while they put together the Lego's with Dad!

Let me tell you...BOOKS ARE EXPENSIVE! All year long, I keep a list of books I want to add to our library. I start making the purchases by going first to ThriftBooks.com. What I can't find there, I purchase from Amazon. Another great idea is to find 25 books from your local library and use them!

Here is our list for this year. You can click on the title for a link to the book at Amazon.

1. What Should Darla Do?

2. Little Critter The Night Before Christmas

3. Frog and Toad are Friends: 50th Anniversary Edition

4. Shark Lady

5. Richard Scarry's Christmas Mice

6. The Story Orchestra: Sleeping Beauty

7. More Caps for Sale: Another Tale of Mischievous Monkeys

8. 1001 Things to Spot at Christmas

9. Once Upon a Goat

10. Argus

11. Churri and Chirra Under the Sea

12. Santa's Story

13. Oh No!

14. Madeline's Christmas

15. Marcel the Shell: With Shoes On

16. A Gift for Santa

17. Fox's Socks

18. Jamberry

19. Richard Scarry's Best Mysteries Ever

20. Each Peach Pear Plum

21. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Pop Up Book

22. Did You See That Dinosaur?

23. The Skunk

If you have a book list, whether it is for the school year, the summer, or Christmas, I would love to hear your suggestions! This Mama needs to start preparing for Christmas 2022! (P.S. Our 25 Books for Christmas tradition is something we do every other year.)

~Andrea