Christmas Book List 2019

It's that time of year to order Christmas books from the library or your favorite bookstore! Here are the books I'm currently recommending for this festive time of year:

 A Literary Christmas: An Anthology by the British Library
I just got this book from the library and am excited to read it this season! The book is arranged around themes such as Before Christmas, The Nativity, Christmas Day, A Child's Christmas, or Seasonal Snow and Ice. Within each theme are up to ten works by famous authors: poems, story excerpts, essays. The authors include William Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, G. K. Chesterton, Samuel Pepys, George Eliot, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kenneth Grahame, and Charles Dickens, among many, many others. It's just the sort of book one can dive into for a few minutes at a time and come away with something to think on.

The History of Christmas by Heather Winslow LeFebvre
Of course I have to recommend my own book! I feel passionate that everyone should understand what they are celebrating (or not) and why. My book is aimed at 8-14 year olds but is also ideal for adults who want a quick overview of Christmas history, and for young children who will enjoy the illustrations (done by my mom!). There's even activities, recipes, and suggested questions.



 Christmas books by Tasha Tudor
I'm on a Tasha Tudor kick right now -- although to some extent I always am. I've added a number of her books to my collection this year as well as discovered that one can reasonably come by an advent calendar of hers! My all-time favorite is Becky's Christmas, probably because so much in the book resonates with my own family's traditions. Here are a few books to check out:

The Dolls' Christmas
Becky's Christmas
The Christmas Cat
A Time to Keep: The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays
Take Joy!: The Tasha Tudor Christmas Book
A Book of Christmas
Tasha Tudor's Advent Calendar: A Wreath of Days
Corgiville Christmas
Tasha Tudor's Favorite Christmas Carols
Snow Before Christmas
The Night Before Christmas (illustrated by Tasha Tudor)


The Jolly Christmas Postman by Janet & Allan Ahlberg
I've purchased this book for a surprise for the younger kids this year. What's not to love about little pockets filled with pull-out letters and other surprises along the way! It makes me want to be a mailman! Or at the least, write lots of real letters to people.


 The Christmas Stories of George MacDonald
I pulled this off my shelf this morning and need to read it this season. I've been studying the (interesting) life of George MacDonald this year and this will be just the thing to add to my growing knowledge of his works.


 Lucy & Tom's Christmas by Shirley Hughes
Next to Becky's Christmas, this might be my other favorite! I love this peak into a traditional British Christmas in the late 1990's. Shirley Hughes is one of my very favorite illustrators. She has many, many books, so check them out throughout the year!


Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp
I love this advent devotional and have used it several years in a row with our children.

 Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
My favorite adult fiction read for December. I'm always on the lookout for new good Christmas-time stories. I have a hard time finding exactly what I like. Someday I will have to fill this gap by attempting to write my own.

 Advent Calendars
I purchased a new advent calendar on our fall family vacation and then realized that all these years I probably could have been collecting advent calendars on Amazon! Yes! They are available! Search for German advent calendars and you'll come across more traditional types. Through various situations, we now have three new-to-us advent calendars for December! I'm so excited! (It's the little things that matter....)

And that's my recommendation for this year! If you have books you love that I haven't mentioned, please comment and let me know! I am always looking for new Christmas books!

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A Christmas Reading List

It's that time of year to start thinking about Christmas reading lists! I thought I'd share a few of our favorites:

 Living the Season Well by Jody Collins
I read this book over the weekend and it was the perfect thing to help me start thinking purposefully toward how I want this holiday season to look for our family and how I can intentionally plan less, do less, create less, but focus more on the things that matter like talking with the children about Christ, who He is and what He came to do as well as having time and energy to reach out to those that need the loving hands of a person to communicate God's love tangibly to them.

Jody's book introduces the concept of Advent to those who are unfamiliar with the term and the practices of the traditional church calendar and the season of preparation for Christ's birth that advent is. She also talks about getting a realistic handle on present-giving, decorating, and even eating. The season doesn't have to turn into a super-stressful, chaotic, overwhelming occasion. If we are willing to give up certain things, change our practices, and keep our focus, the season can be lived well.


 Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp
I love this book so much! It's one of the ways I can easily keep the younger kids focused on Scripture throughout the month of December. This book is similar to the Jesse Tree project and has a reading for each day of advent, covering the entire story of the Bible throughout the month! We have an ornament we add to our "Jesse Tree" each day after we do our reading.

Ann's written an adult version of this book: The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas



Becky's Christmas by Tasha Tudor is my favorite children's book and we read it every year, usually as part of my birthday celebration. It shows what the Christmas season is like for a farming family in the early 20th century in New England with handmade gifts and decorations, homemade baked goods, and of course beautiful illustrations by Tasha Tudor.

Some of Tasha's other Christmas books we enjoy are:
Corgiville Christmas
The Doll's Christmas

Lucy & Toms' Christmas by Shirley Hughes
This is my favorite British children's Christmas book. It shows the Christmas season from the perspective of a little girl and boy living in modern England and includes so many of the various Christmas traditions we enjoyed when we lived in the UK.























Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
This is my favorite adult Christmas novel. Just thinking about it brings cozy feelings and thoughts of sitting by a fire in an old stone house with a snowstorm outside, good company inside, and the propect of many happy days ahead.

Christmas with Rosamunde Pilcher is a lovely book describing the Christmases of Pilcher and the things that contributed to the Christmas stories she wrote.

Every Valley by Albert Blackwell
Handel's Messiah is something I love to listen to at Christmas -- it's taken from Scripture and the way the Scriptures were sewn together and accompanied by music is just amazing to me. It's like listening to an incredible Bible study and at a very stressful time of year the words and music always soothe my soul.

All that to say, this book is meant to be read during advent with a reading for each day based off of a portion of Handel's Messiah.

The Christmas Stove by Alta Seymour was introduced to us last year by Amy over at Hearth Ridge Reflections. It's a vintage story set in Eastern Europe about two orphan children who must go to live with a grouchy old aunt and how they must earn their keep and celebrate Christmas. It was delightful!

Christmas with Miss Read and other Christmas books from the same author are always welcome at this time of year. Miss Read writes about a little village in England.

Carols of Christmas by Andrew Gant
This is a collection of carol histories. It's always fun and instructive to learn the history behind popular songs.

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot by Frances Frost
This chapter book for kids is another book that is dear to my heart. Set on a farm in upstate New York in the early 20th century, it is the story of a 12-year old boy and his pony and the adventures he and his family get up to at Christmas-time.

Jolly Christmas Postman by Janet & Allan Ahlberg
The Jolly Postman books are so much fun with their adorable illustrations and the fact that the pages have little pockets with extra parts to the story you can pull out and enjoy! Being from England, how can one go wrong?


Shepherd's Abiding by Jan Karon
This is one of the book's I have on my library list this season. I feel it is hard to find a good Christmas story and I am always on the lookout! I hope someday I have the skill to write one, or more....

And that's it for this Christmas book list!

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