Christmas Greetings

Christmas is nie. The presents are wrapped and the bags are packed. There's even tinsel on the car. We'll be off on holidays in just a few more hours, and there is a palpable frisson of excitement in the air.

We're like big kids at Christmas. All of us. Even mature grown-up Daddy has been known to sport an elf's hat during some days in December. It's great.

The wonder for us begins the moment the 1st December arrives and the wreath resumes its place on our front door. The tree comes next. Finally it is time for the books. Always the books in Our Peaceful Home.

Our Basket of Delights.

You can see many of them in my sidebar. Just over there to your left, see? I've reviewed some of them as well. I hope you've enjoyed your peek into our Christmas reading. There are so many beautiful books out there.

Tomorrow we'll read Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas. It will be The Night Before Christmas after all. At night when Jemimah is all tucked up in bed we'll sing I'll Telephone and Tell Old Mr Santa Claus. Anybody remember that song from Primary School days? Its singing remains a necessary part of Christmas Eve tradition in the our Peaceful Home, and in my siblings' as well.

Christmas Day we eat. All day. We do not read, we do not sing. We do laugh though, and we eat, and we talk, and we eat, and we watch the kids - of all ages - open their presents and we eat and we have fun. It is a great day. Too great to interrupt by reading.

Until the evening of course. Then we read. We always read at night. Every night. Even Christmas night. Besides, by night time on Christmas night we generally have stomach aches. From all that eating. Or maybe from not reading. I don't know which, but one of the two doesn't agree with us. Probably the lack of books, but the eating may have a bit of an effect.

Then we go to bed.

To sleep off the stomach ache.

After a final read of Wenceslas by Geraldine McCaughrean on Boxing Day, our Christmas reading is over and our Basket of Delights will go back into storage for another 11 months. So many wonderful Living Books, made all the more special by their once a year seasonality.

I love Christmas. I love Books. Can you tell?

I can't help but think that it is this excitement that makes Christmas such a precious, wonderful, magical time in our lives. Jemimah can't help to feel the excitement building.

Reading books is like that too. I am excited about books. I want Jemimah to feel that excitement about them too. And you know, I think she does.

The love of reading is such a precious thing to pass on to our children, a lifelong legacy of so much pleasure and delight. As this old year passes into the new, won't you make this your new Year's resolution - if it's not already - to read more to your children? Your kids are never too old to be read to.

Make sure they have access to loads of Living Books to read to themselves as well. Books that will touch their hearts and their minds and their imaginations. A love of reading will give them pleasure for their whole lives. Future success too, if you believe the literacy experts.

Don't you want that for your children? I know I want it for mine.

I hope you've enjoyed the beautiful Australian Christmas themed pictures accompanying this post. They're by Marg Towt, and illustrate the book Bush Christmas by Jo Monie. Look out for it!

A Merry Christmas and a Blessed, Happy, Healthy and Joyful New Year to all of you, my dear friends. I'll see you again soon.