It’s December! I have opened two windows on my chocolate Advent calendar and I am contemplating Christmas music – is it too early? I am browsing my Christmas boxes in the storage room and trying to remember which one has the seasonal kitchen towels and cookie tins.
The only real nod to Christmas has been collecting and setting out a display of our Christmas books – the earliest picture books, the books with the gorgeous illustrations, the tales of Santa as a child, the Bible stories of the birth of Christ, the English collections of Christmas mysteries by 19th-century writers, and various stories by Dickens and Tolkien. They take up a long bookshelf and, truth be told, are just the right amount of decoration for me right now.
Let me tell you about some of my favorite classic Christmas books for children in our house. We’ll start with The Christmas Story, a vintage Little Golden Book published in 1952. It’s the story we always read before we set out Mary and Joseph and all the angels and sheep and Wise Men in the stable. It is properly simple and solemn to start with and ends with the feeling of momentous things happening. It was part of my childhood.
The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore is classic! His poem was titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, published in 1949. We have several versions of this book include the Little Golden Book illustrated by Corinne Malvern, which shows the chubby-cheeked Santa popping out of the chimney with his bag full of toys.
Charles Santore illustrates a board book version of The Night Before Christmas which is charming for younger children.
For glorious illustrations, I love Jan Brett’s version with detailed pictures of reindeer and elves with the sleigh, and the details inset around the picture on each page. I want to bake the cookies and eat the candy that swirls around the children “nestled all snug in their beds.” That’s Christmas magic to me. We read it each Christmas Eve before hanging stockings.
Another special book is Nutcracker, by E. T. A. Hoffman, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Sendak’s quirky drawings suit the dream-like story, while Mary Engelbreit’s Nutcracker has colorful and detailed pictures to draw children right into the story. When the children were young, we lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the University of North Carolina School of the Arts put on a wonderful performance of The Nutcracker. We dressed in our finest new Christmas clothes and had tea after the matinee.
My two older children were four and three years old when Chris Van Allsburg won the Caldecott Medal in 1986 for The Polar Express, and it quickly became a favorite. We had an audio version read by the author which was perfect for winter evenings before bed. Liam Neeson narrates the book for the 30th year anniversary version of the book. There is even a Hallmark Keepsake Christmas Ornament 2020 of the magic sleigh bell.
There are many, many more wonderful children’s books for the season, and I could go on and on. So, more next time!
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