It’s important to me to teach my children about and keep them focused on the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate every year on December 25th. It’s easy to get caught up in all the things to do surrounding the holiday – shopping, baking, decorating, parties – that it can potentially be just as easy to lose focus on why we are doing all of these things in the first place. Christmas is a special time to rejoice in, and celebrate our Savior’s birth.
Christ needs to be our priority all the time, and especially at Christmas. As a parent, I strive to keep my focus on Christ during the Christmas season and make it mostly about Him. One way to help your child understand the true meaning of Christmas is by simply reading books to them about the birth of Jesus. I can’t think of anything better than curling up by the light of the Christmas tree with your little ones (and big ones too) and reading a book about Christ just before bedtime.
Here is a list of 20 Christ-Centered Christmas storybooks that will make excellent editions to your Christmas storybook library. The books on this list are some of our favorites, some that we are planning on reading for the first time this year, and some that have been recommended to us. Maybe you will find something on this list that will become a family favorite and will be read in your home every year!
1. Itsy Bitsy Christmas: You’re Never Too Little for His Love
2. J Is for Jesus: The Sweetest Story Ever Told
3. Humphrey’s First Christmas
4. Who is Coming to Our House?
5. The Little Shepherd’s Christmas
6. Tonight You Are My Baby: Mary’s Christmas Gift
7. Room for a Little One
8. Listen to the Silent Night
9. Tiny Baby Jesus
10. A Christmas Goodnight
11. The Christmas Story
12. Little Star
13. This Is the Stable
14. The Animals’ Christmas Eve
15. Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story
16. The Story of Christmas
17. The Wonder of Christmas
18. Christmas in the Manger
19. One Shining Star: A Christmas Counting Book
20. The Nativity
Does your family have any favorite Christmas storybooks that you read each year?
My list of favorite Christmas picture books is here! My youngest is now 8, so there won’t be many more years that I’ll be reading them with my own children, but I have grandchildren about ready to hear them, and I bring them in to my private school classroom, too.
http://startwellhomeschool.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-favorite-christmas-books.html
I haven’t heard of some of these… Thanks for sharing this list with Thrive @ Home Thursday!
Thanks for sharing! We have a bunch of these but there are several I want to get now.
The Crippled Lamb!
Fabulous! Thanks Sarah – Pinned and am featuring at Family Fun Friday.
Monica
http://www.happyandblessedhome.com/category/family-fun
Thanks for putting this together! Room for a Little One is one of our favorites and we picked up Itsy Bitsy Christmas this year. Another one I picked up that you don’t have is Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree by Crystal Bowman. It ties in traditional decorations (angels, star, bells, etc) to the reason for Jesus’ birth.
A favorite series of ours–Jotham’s Journey, Bartholomew’s Passage and Tabitha’s Travels. They are advent books by Arnold Ytreeide. You read some each night, one book a year. We are on our 2nd round. We all enjoy them so much!
God Gave Us Christmas by Lisa Tawn Bergren is our favorite! I even brought it to my daughter and her friends at preschool. Thanks for the list! Can’t wait to go pick up a few for this Christmas.
We have been wanting to buy “What is Christmas” by Michelle Medlock Adams. We have “What is Thanksgiving” and “What is Easter”. We love those.
We also have The Christmas Story by Pingry. That’s a good one and that is a series, too, I think.
Those are both for smaller kids, though, which is what we have. 🙂
I hope you will look for and then read “The Mothers at the Manger”, which I wrote a few years ago. It was available through Amazon last year, I hope they still have it.