Our Favorite Christmas Books

One of our favorite winter books!  It's an inexpensive treat--get it here.

Happy December, everyone.  And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?

I have not been able to yet bring myself to listen to the news all the way through; nor have I been jumping to read The Week when it arrives in the mail.  As Martin says, "Maybe it's okay to hunker down for a while.  Honestly, it's like watching a house getting ripped down when the house is the one you've been living in."

So I took Facebook off my phone, I followed my resolution to leave Google news unvisited; and I have been spending more time with my children and with other people.  If the election reminded us of anything, it reminded us to be with each other more, to have more conversations, to remember to love and be kind.  This is our motto currently up in our kitchen:  LOVE IS KIND.  Simple but hard.  And love and kindness starts at home, where perhaps it is hardest to love or be kind.

A good time for Christmas, all in all.  A good time for hope.

Last Saturday my friend Kara, her wee girl, and my three climbed on a horse-drawn carriage and clopped around our festive Norwegian downtown (Poulsbo); then we smiled at Santa in his little house and then we saw a lot of Vikings climbing aboard a wooden boat.  They were in various stages of barbaric undress--furs, boots, horned hats, the whole lot--and they were casting out to find St. Lucia to bring her back to the gazebo.  We saw her there later, where doused wood awaited the upcoming bonfire and townsfolk 'danced' around a Christmas tree that kept blowing over in the wind (I suppose dancing for Lutherans is actually walking one way around the tree, then switching directions, to a'cappella Christmas carols sung rather staidly).

Finally, the Vikings arrived in a somber line, smoking torches held aloft.  St. Lucia stood in the gaseous smoke, her hair alight with. . .battery-powered candles.  I was terribly disappointed not to see real candles, but as Kara said, what did I expect with the bluster?  Her hair would have caught flame and we would have had a horrific spectacle.  I guess you have to go to a Lutheran church to see St. Lucia with real flickering candles in her hair.

And now, now, on this Thursday, we expect:  SNOW and lots of it.  Truly.  Snow still makes me ridiculously happy, even after seven years in Pennsylvania.  The girls are praying for snow and Martin keeps checking the weather.  Merry says she wakes with the song "Snow, snow, snow, snow!  it won't be long before we'll all be there. . .in snow" from "White Christmas."

In the Pacific Northwest, winter usually means rain, and lots of it.

I love this poem by Jeanne McGahey, which I originally read in Winter Poems (also an inexpensive buy to add to your winter library).

Oregon Winter  (lifted from this facebook post).

by Jeanne McGahey

The rain begins. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time – there will be months of rain.

Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses

Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles through weighted air. . . .

Read the rest HERE.

Rain!  We are not in Oregon, of course, but we have our share of rain--and yet, lately, it has been crisp, cold, and zippy, Bea's bus driver has been glowering properly as all bus drivers should when there is a bit of snow and a bit of ice, and Bea, who was home yesterday with a cough, found that the street gutters outside our house were frozen and the possibilities of fun endless and varied.

Okay, I have a few more favorite winter books to share with you--did you see Snowglobe Family, above, by Jane O'Connor?  If you don't have it yet, go get it!

We just adore Barbara Cooney, and here are two of my Christmas favorites illustrated by her:

 

Holly and the Ivy beautifully retells one of my favorite Christmas stories and The Year of the Christmas Tree spins a lovely tale set in an Appalachian town.  Neither are fast read-alouds, so snuggle in with your lovies and enjoy an evening of sweet reading.








Along those same lines, I found this wonderful book last year about self-sacrifice and love after a war:

And another of our favorites by another of our favorite writers/illustrators--our other favorite by dePaola is Clown of God, which always makes me weep at the end.

And here is a gem by the poet Gary Soto.  Order it in Spanish, too, and get hungry for tamales.

We also love the illustrations in this book by another of our favorite lyrical illustrators, Susan Jeffers. At my local bookstore, I saw a new book illustrated by her, a beautiful depiction of Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, which is on my wish list.

I could actually post forever about our favorite Christmas books, but I end with one that is less lyrical but that my kiddos love for its hilarious illustrations:

And here's one I just found this year--a story of waiting for snow told in simple, sparse prose.  The town's adults doubt snow is coming, but Boy with Dog knows better.  Quirky, charming illustrations won a Caldecott Honor.

Shame!  I just spoke with my sister, who tells me that the snow will most likely be a nonevent:  "It will snow one or two inches as we sleep tonight, but by the morning the rain will have melted it away."

Oh, well.  I will have to make my own snow day by snuggling down next to my girls and reading all our favorite snow books!