Christmas Books

 Do you find that Christmas sneaks up on you from year to year and so you never have the resources or books on hand that you had planned to when you had great dreams about it in March?

That’s why I planned to post this in March! Oh well. Perhaps there is still time...

Two books we have discovered in recent years may make it to your Christmas reading list.

The first is Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, edited by Nancy Guthrie. Meredith has been talking about her books for some time, and I was pleased to finally get my hands on this in time for Christmas last year.

It is a collection of 22 writings or sermons from authors such as Luther, Spurgeon, Augustine, Piper and Keller and each focuses on a different aspect of the Christmas story.

This was a great way to keep me anchored to the word of God throughout December and helped me focus on Jesus coming as Messiah and Lord. I combined it (accidentally, but with unexpected benefit) with reading through Luke 1-2 in depth at the same time and it was marvellous, there were treasures abounding in every verse.  I plan to do the same this year, starting on December 1.

The second one is for families: The Lion Storyteller Christmas Book by Bob Hartman and Krisztina Kallai Nagy. These are great read aloud stories for children. The book is divided into thirds:

1. These are the accounts of the first Christmas retold in segments. This section is very good and we really enjoyed them, they helped to add more to our own advent readings.

2. This section is a collection of stories explaining where various Christmas traditions have come from - like the tree, the presents, the man delivering presents, etc. These were interesting and fun.

3. The final section is a collection of Christmas tales and legends from around the world. These were fine, but we all preferred the first two sections.

We read it at night and it was a nice end to the day, especially if you read it around the Christmas tree!