I’m so excited to get to share a Christmas tradition with you all… Christmas is my favorite time of year and I have so many. The music starts November 1; the decoration happens the day after Thanksgiving; a gift gets opened on Christmas Eve; stories are read; movies watched; daily Advent readings are read… There’s a lot of wonder and delight this time of year. But one of my favorite traditions isn’t mine; it is my aunt’s.
My aunt gives each of my children a book every year. It’s a beautiful tradition and the books my aunt selects are treasures, such as The Secret Garden, in which the drawings are as exquisitely wrought as the words. Gorgeous picture books like Eilenberg and Barrett’s Beauty and the Beast and McClure’s Tom Finger have now given way to spectacular editions of The Wind in the Willows, The Phantom Toll Booth, Heidi, Little Women and others. And my kids, who regard most things as having the life span of deli meats or an iPhone App, adore these books, savor their words and pictures, shelve them in special corners of their rooms, and anticipate next year’s gift.
Each Christmas morning, I watch and smile. I never say much because that is the surest way to end the magic – by endorsing it. But these stories are changing my children, year by year. They are invited into new tales of adventure, new worlds and new ways of looking at life, relationships and humanity. They are also invited into a deeper relationship with a great-aunt – and that’s transformative too.
So there is my Christmas tradition – one that’s grown over the years in a beautiful moment of love and literature, across the generations, at the “most wonderful time of the year.”
About The Author: Katherine Reay is the bestselling and award-winning author of Dear Mr. Knightley, Lizzy & Jane, The Bronte Plot, A Portrait of Emily Price, and The Austen Escape. All Katherine’s novels are contemporary stories with a bit of classical flair. She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University and is a wife, mother, rehabbing runner, former marketer, and avid chocolate consumer. After living all across the country and a few stops in Europe, Katherine now happily resides outside Chicago, IL.
