‘Tis the season! Despite the chaos this time of year brings — between wish lists and battling crowds for parking spots, to decorating and trimming the tree — there is one thing that manages to keep me and my family grounded during this holiday season…our Zahorchak family traditions! Family traditions are what make your holidays special.

As a kid I loved going to Christmas eve mass and eating dinner out at George’s Kitchen because no other restaurant was open! Then we would go home and unwrap one present. I remember the excitement literally eating away at me as I looked forward to Christmas morning and all the presents, presents, presents! Unwrapping the gift, the unknown of what’s inside and the purity of a surprise is in itself a gift! I love the feeling. That’s why when I stumbled across this Advent idea a few years back, I knew it would be a perfect holiday tradition to add to the season!

A Bedtime Advent Book Calendar Tradition

Chapter One:

• Gather 24 holiday books: I first looked to see how many we had collected over the years in our personal collection, and then we hit the library shelves for the rest!

Chapter Two:

• Wrap each book individually. You don’t need to use your Step2 customer service  for this job!
• Invite your kids if they are old enough to help with the wrapping. The books are perfect practice for wrapping gifts!

Chapter Three:

• Number the gifts 1-24; this can be as simple as using a magic marker right onto the wrapping paper. Or, feel free to get fancy using gift tags. This also was a great number writing practice for my first grader who I assigned this task.

Chapter Four:

• Place the books in a basket or other simple storage container (better yet, if your child has a little Christmas tree in the bedroom, scatter the books underneath).

• I placed the books in random order in our basket so my kids could practice their number recognition skills while searching for the book that corresponded with the date.

Chapter Five:

• Now your child can dive in and unwrap the book!

Why I Love This Zahorchak Family Tradition!
I always grew up on the Advent Calendar Tradition of popping open little doors and seeing pictures to count down to Christmas. I love the idea of wrapping up books because we always read at night, and this makes reading enjoyable and something for the kids to look forward to at bed time.

This holiday tradition is also teaching my three kids turn taking and sharing. Since only one book is opened at night, we have to “rock, paper, scissors” our way to who gets to go first! But, obviously there are plenty of “presents” to go around, and although they may not be doing the unwrapping, every child is eagerly peeping over shoulders to see what book we read that night!

It also helps curb that “I want to open more presents!” syndrome of this time of year!

Epilogue
Just keep in mind if there is a special book you read on Christmas eve to be sure to number that book for the 24th. Usually ours is “The Night Before Christmas,” but this year I plan to buy one of those fancy, recordable holiday books from Hallmark, and record my husband and myself reading the story as a special gift for Christmas Eve. I also number all the library borrowed books first because most likely I need to return them before Christmas eve!