We’re start­ing a new tra­di­tion this year and it’s one that I’m SO excited about: Christ­mas Book Advent. We always read Christ­mas books this time of year, so that’s noth­ing new. In fact, here’s last year’s post on some of our favorite Christ­mas books. Over the year, I’ve added to our Christ­mas book col­lec­tion. So, this year, I’m wrap­ping them up & we’re open­ing one each day!The idea is inspired by the fab­u­lous Ali­son over at Oopsey Daisy! When I saw her book advent posts last year, I knew it was some­thing I wanted to start! I absolutely love her idea of doing some sort of activ­ity related to the book each day. Not sure that I’ll be quite as on the ball as she is, but I already have some activ­i­ties planned!

Here’s our list:

1. Snowbear’s Christ­mas Countdown
2. Silent Night (Pageant of Lights Book)
3. Wom­bat Divine
4. The Polar Express
5. Jesus, Me, and My Christ­mas Tree
6. Santa’s Lit­tle Helper
7. Snow­men at Night
8. Bear Stays Up for Christmas
9. Mortimer’s Christ­mas Manger
10. The Mit­ten 20th Anniver­sary Edition
11. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
12. Rein­deer Christ­mas (Paula Wise­man Books)
13. Snow­men at Christmas
14. The Christ­mas Star
15. Humphrey’s First Christmas 
16. Froggy’s Best Christmas
17. Frosty the Snowman
18. Merry Christ­mas, Curi­ous George
19. The Lit­tle Drum­mer Mouse
20. If You Take a Mouse to the Movies
21. What Is Christmas?
22. A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas (Run­ning Press Miniatures)
23. ???? We need one more book! I want some­thing about gin­ger­bread men or houses or some­thing. Any ideas?
24. The Night Before Christmas

So far, the plan is to make “snow paint” snow­men for Snow­men at Night. I’m also plan­ning a Christ­mas tree, star, rein­deer, and nativ­ity crafts to go with some of the books. For a cou­ple oth­ers (like The Polar Express and How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas!), I have those planned on week­ends so we can read the book and then have a fam­ily movie night! And, given my love of wom­bats (yes, really), we’ll hang our wom­bat orna­ment after read­ing Wom­bat Divine. And, yes, we really have a wom­bat orna­ment. We bought it on our trip to Aus­tralia and I LOVE it! See?!After gath­er­ing up all my books, I decided to num­ber them. Some are totally just ran­domly put in, oth­ers I knew I wanted to read on spe­cific days. Like, I wanted to start with Snowbear’s Christ­mas Count­downand talk about how we are doing a Christ­mas count­down too. And, it’s been a tra­di­tion since Big Brother’s first Christ­mas that we read Twas The Night Before Christ­mas, so I knew that would be last. Then, I wanted to mix up some of the more reli­gious ones and more Santa-themed ones to have a nice mix. I like hav­ing them num­bered and listed out too, so that way if I want to switch days, it’s easy to do so! Where to get 24 Christ­mas Books (aside from tra­di­tion in-store/on-line retailers)?

I started build­ing a col­lec­tion over time. This will be Big Brother’s 5th Christ­mas and so we’ve been col­lect­ing a cou­ple books a year the past 5 Christ­mas sea­sons. If you don’t have the time/money to invest on it this year, you could always do a 5 days of Christ­mas or 12 Days of Christ­mas book advent.

1. Thrift Stores! Last week­end I hit up a used book­store by our house and came home with 9 books for just over $27 with tax! So, at an aver­age cost of just $3/book for nice, hard­back titles like The Polar Express and How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas!, I thought it was a great deal!

2. eBay. As I alluded to in the Cyber Mon­day post, I also pur­chased a few books on eBay to add to the col­lec­tion. If you find the right auc­tion or Buy It Now price, you can score some REALLY sweet deals!

3. Scholas­tic Book Orders. If you have kid­dos in school (even at some preschools) or know an ele­men­tary school teacher, you should be able to get in on a Scholas­tic Book Order. These were one of my favorite things in ele­men­tary school and I was prac­ti­cally giddy when Big Brother came home from preschool with one!

4. Library. I still don’t have a full 24 book col­lec­tion that’s ours to keep. Just this morn­ing, we hit up the library to check out Christ­mas books. Our library only lets you check out 5 hol­i­day books at a time, but they aren’t due back until the 20th. So, that’s good for us.

Now, I can’t wait for Decem­ber 1st to get every­thing started!

Do you have any spe­cial tra­di­tions involv­ing Christ­mas books? What books are your favorite?

Linked to: *Lil’ Luna, *Show & Tell, *Sun­dae Scoop

Dis­clo­sure: This post con­tains affil­i­ate links.