Establishing A Holiday Tradition With Your Child

I love the holidays. I love decorating, wrapping gifts, sipping eggnog and listening to holiday music. I love pulling out my favorite holiday collections, baking cookies and planning the dinner menu. I love holiday traditions, you know those things that you do year after year like opening a gift on Christmas Eve or watching your favorite holiday movie. Mine is A Christmas Story. Each year TBS has a marathon, and I watch the movie over and over while I'm cooking or making final preparations for Christmas Day.

I'm establishing holiday traditions with my grandson now. I'm an avid reader and believe there's a benefit to reading to your child, so one of my traditions will be reading the classic, The Night Before Christmas, to my grandson. I loved this book when I was growing up. I wished my mother had kept my copy. It would have been great to be able to pass it on. Anyway, I'll be purchasing a new copy for my grandson. I wanted to share a few of my other favorite holiday children's books. Thought you may be interested in purchasing a book or two from my list so you too can establish a holiday tradition with your little one.

Here' my list:

• The Night Before Christmas
• The Nutcracker
• The Drummer Boy
• Frosty The Snowman
• Ruldolph The Red Nose Reindeer
• Twelve Days Of Christmas
• How The Grinch Stole Christmas
• The Elves & The Shoemaker
• A Charlie Brown Christmas

I think it's important to make memories for our children. I want my grandson to remember my nutcracker collection, the oversized ornaments on the tree, this is a new tradition, and the smell of cookies baking in Mama's oven. I want him to remember having The Night Before Christmas read to him on Christmas Eve. I'm sure I will think of many more traditions to start with him over the next few years. Share a few of your holiday traditions or add to my book list, we would love to hear from you.