One Couto Family Christmas Tradition ~~ A Christmas Book each year ~
Each Christmas season, I head upstairs in our very old home to a very neat, built-in bookcase that houses dozens of children’s books. I guess you could call it the Kids’ Bookcase.
Yep, I’m one of those teachers turned Mom of 4 and then Grandma of 12 who cherishes books and I’ve saved them all.
At Christmas Time, all of the Christmas books come downstairs into our cozy front room, the room of no technology!
… just waiting for our 12 grandkids to see them, pick them up, turn their pages, remember the stories from years’ past. Waiting for the littlest ones to hear the stories for the first, second or maybe third year. Waiting for the older kids to now read to the littlest ones, its own magic in itself, lingering on magnificent illustrations and pointing with both big and tiny fingers at everything holiday…
Cozy-ing up with a grandchild, eyes wide with wonder on each of us, re-discovering the tales old and new.
It’s like the books come alive. Well, the books and the illustrations do come alive, reading after reading, year after year, decade after decade.
Books.
They bring great Joy and revive great Memories.
Each year, Pops and I buy a new Christmas book for our collection. We’ve been doing this, it seems, forever, each book with a little message and the year scrawled inside, from Santa or from us.
We now search for a book that reflects something of our Christmas-themed pajamas that we give each year to each of our grandkids, another family tradition. This Christmas, our pajama bottoms were moose-inspired, so moose it was!
What child (or adult!) can resist a book about skipping out on chores to a romping adventure in the mountains, with magnificent illustrations to bring the journey to life?
For the Couto Family Tradition, our 2016 Christmas Book is perfection of fun, a bit of wanderlust, imaginative journey and love of family, all wrapped up in the turning of each glorious page.
Decade after decade, year after year, book after book, it’s always the eyes-wide with wonder feeling of Tradition that I love so very much.
A feeling of Family.
