Every season, I get out our designated plastic totes that I have organized and set aside with each specific holiday. For example, I have several plastic tote containers for Christmas decorations, one tote for autumn/Halloween decorations, and one for miscellaneous holidays (such as Easter, St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day because there are so few items for these holidays).
In each designated holiday container I make sure to include the corresponding holiday’s children’s books. Since Halloween is right around the corner, when I get out the designated tote container of decorations each year, we are excited to find our Halloween books. The Honey Badger loves playing with books, having books read to her, and pretends to read the books to her “baby sister,” the Snorting Warthog. She is excited every season to find these themed books, as if they were an old friend, or a brand new toy.
This helps bring the feelings of the season to life and make the upcoming day seem more of a celebrated, exciting time to be with family, friends, and to make memories. It is easy and inexpensive to include holiday books into the normal traditions of decorating your space for those that have children and enjoy making reading a priority in the life of your child.
Even for families that choose not to celebrate certain holidays, such as Halloween, there are plenty of seasonal books that you can include into your “fall”-themed decor bin, such as children’s books about harvest, pumpkins, apple-picking, and autumn weather.
This has been a tradition for the past three years and my mother-in-law who does not enjoy the Halloween holiday, is very helpful and fun with picking out books, too. She has given the girls books about the harvest and iSpy pumpkin books, in addition to some Halloween books as well.
The easiest holiday to find themed children’s books would definitely be Christmas. We have so many Christmas books that two years ago, I went through them all and realized we had three duplicates of some classic stories! So we gave those to some friends and I hope that they enjoy bringing some of the classic and contemporary stories of the Nativity and the Christmas season alive with their children when the reread these stories.
In order to not “break-the-bank” on buying children’s books, especially in getting started, I would highly recommend grabbing some gently used holiday-themed books at local rummage/garage sales, second-hand stores, or ask friends and family who have older children that may not be interested in these books anymore. You will be pleasantly surprised how fast you can accumulate these children’s books and incorporate them in to the rotation of your decorations and holiday memories. You can always go to the local libraries and pick up themed books as well. The only downside to this as they are often picked over by other kids and you will not be reading the exact same stories every year to your child (which I have found to be an exciting treat and tradition in reading some of the same stories). The library can even be a supplemental resource for your traditional stories that you keep in your holiday bins.
Have you tried anything like this? How responsive were your children?
Tiffany O'Day 
Leave a Reply