Advent Book Calendar: A New Family Tradition

I’m a sucker for good family traditions. I grew up in a family with strong traditions that I continue to have with my small family of my husband and our twin boys. When I came upon this idea from another blogger, I knew I needed to jump right in! I have spent the last few weeks immersed in children’s Christmas literature to find the best books to wrap up for our Advent book calendar this year.

Table of Contents

Shop Advent Book List on Amazon

Getting Started with Your New Tradition

In this post, I want to share with you how I plan to initiate this new tradition and the list of books I will be wrapping up and numbering for our Advent book calendar. I can’t think of a better way to truly enter into the season of Advent than bringing more books into our home that will help us to slow down, reflect, and prepare our hearts, homes, and minds for the coming of Jesus on Christmas Day.

What is an Advent book calendar?

An Advent book calendar is a fun way to count down the days to Christmas. Each day in December, a new book is wrapped up. Every day, a new story of love, anticipation, and joy is ready for your family to read together. I would recommend choosing all 24 books you will have leading up to Christmas and wrapping them all together.

I wrapped all of mine in this classic brown wrapping paper, which will allow me to write numbers directly onto the paper or decorate it in some other way. On the back of the wrapping, I made a note of which book was inside, in case I wanted to change up the order at any point. A different year, I wrapped them up with some beautiful Christmas wrapping paper. Or you don’t even need to wrap them up at all if that’s too much!

When should I start my Advent book calendar?

You can start your Advent Calendar on December 1st. That will give you 24 days of books leading up to Christmas. As a Christian, there are four Sundays in Advent. Often the first Sunday of Advent falls on or near December 1st.

With what age child can I start an Advent book calendar?

You can start an Advent book calendar at any age! My boys will have just turned two, and this seems like a great time to start becasue they love sitting and reading books with us. However, I see that we could have started it last year and had opportunities to read them wonderful stories and be together as a family. As children get older and into elementary school, there are so many incredible Christmas stories that they will love. Consider some wholesome Christmas books geared more towards toddlers.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

What books should I include?

I have an entire blog post on Christmas classics for children, toddler Christmas books, and I’ve even got you covered if you are looking for Christ-centered Christmas books for your home library. Any of these blog posts will be a great place to start to see some of the best Christmas stories. You could choose any one of these books, and it would be an amazing addition to an Advent book calendar. I have had to take those lists and narrow it down just a bit. Here are the books I will be including in our Advent book calendar this year. What I love is that each year I can change it up a bit as I add more books to our collection!

What do I do if I don’t have 24 Christmas books?

It can be expensive to build up a collection of Christmas books to have a complete Advent book calendar. I have a few ideas on how you can find books on a budget, do the book calendar with fewer books, or get books on loan.

Utilize Your Local Library

You don’t need to buy new books; you can rent books from the library and even renew them to keep them for a longer time during the Christmas season. Checking out books from the library is a great way to get a whole collection of Christmas books at no cost.

Buy Just a Few at a Time

If this is a tradition you want to have in your family, then you may buy books slowly over time. Adding a new book every month or two can be a great way to slowly build your book collection without it feeling like such a big chunk of your monthly budget.

Buy Used Books

Keep your eye out for used books at thrift stores or garage sales throughout the year. I also purchased some books online at thriftbooks.com which has free shipping after a certain dollar amount and so many incredible titles at a fraction of the price of a new book.

Just offer books as often as you can

If you don’t have 24 books for your Advent book calendar, then just offer a new Christmas book to your child as often as you can. It may be every other day, once a week, or whatever you have the margin to do. I love that this is such a simple tradition that you can make work for your family and your budget.

Alternatively, there are 12 days of Christmas! You could do 12 books, one for each day of Christmas.

What is the best way to display books at home?

The best way to display picture books is by using a forward-facing bookshelf. This allows your child to view the covers of the books and choose one that appeals to them. Check out this blog post for some great forward-facing, Montessori-inspired bookshelves for your home.

Another year I just had one basket that had all of our Advent books, and we chose a new one each day, I didn’t even number them! I would write the book title on the back of the wrapping paper so I knew what books were inside in case I wanted them to read a particular book on a certain day.

For example, on a day we go get our Christmas tree, we could read about a Christmas tree!

I hope you enjoy this Advent tradition in your family! Let me know below if you have other great book recommendations or Advent traditions your family loves.