A mommy friend posted on Facebook last year about doing a book advent calendar or book countdown to Christmas for her child. Apparently this was already a thing, and she did not invent it, but being the first time I saw it, I thought she was a genius. Twenty-five days of celebrating the holidays through books? Twenty-fve excuses to share my love of reading and the Christmas season with my little guy? Twenty-five ways to spoil him with stories and snuggles? Sign me up!

So this year I pulled together twenty-five winter and holiday themed books, wrapped them up, and stacked them artfully (as artful as I get) with a Santa hat plopped on top. Tonight we dove into the pile and explored our first new book, Elmo’s Countdown to Christmas, because, ya know, toddler. (And yes, I’m starting early because I want to end on Christmas Eve with The Night Before Christmas.)

Little man was pretty impressed when he realized the stack of Mickey Mouse wrapped packages were all books and all for him. He was so impressed, in fact, he strung together four words “one book more…please” which is pretty good for a pint-sized beggar and the polite please almost had me caving—but not quite.

For those who think this is as awesome as I did but worry about the cost or work, here are a few ideas to simplify it:

• Reduce, reuse, recycle. My little guy doesn’t know that 20 of his 25 books were gifted, donated, or bought used. Even as he gets older and might remember favorite books from year to year, it’s still okay to reuse because it’s about the fun of opening and (re)reading the story, not about ‘getting things.’ I plan to rotate in a few new titles each year to fit his interests and age. This year the new ones were Mickey, Daniel Tiger, Elmo, Mac the Tractor, and Little Blue Truck.
• Involve the relatives. If you have plans to see aunts, uncles, or grandparents a few nights over the holiday season, see if they’d be willing to share a favorite story with your little one as his/her book that day.
• Make an outing of it. Take a weekly trip to the library and pick out books for the week to read each night.
• Do the 12 books of Christmas or the 8 books of Chanukah. Or for the older kids just pick a special novel and read a chapter or two each night.
• Skip the wrapping. Stick the books in a festive bag or box and pull one out each night. Or maybe that creepy Elf can deliver a new, unwrapped book each night. (Sorry, I have elf issues.)

I can never pass up a chance to read to my little man and am lucky beyond measure to have the time and means to be able to share stories with him on a daily basis, but however you choose to instill the love of reading and/or the magic of the holidays in your child, you are giving them some of the best gifts there are to give!

Happy reading!

Here are the books I included in our book countdown to Christmas this year. The covers below are affiliate links to Amazon: