Create a Holiday Picture Book Time Capsule This Year

What do you want your children to remember this holiday season? In chats with my grown daughters, I’ve often asked them about Christmas past and what stuck out in their memory banks. Oddly enough, at least from a parental viewpoint, it was usually some small forgotten shared moment with them when the frenzy had halted for a brief moment and we shared time together. I’ll give you a for instance. We have a tradition started by my youngest where we gather and reenact a scene from “The Charlie Brown Christmas” special. Finding the biggest red Christmas ball we can find, we hang it on a scraggly fir tree my youngest planted years ago. We sing “Hark the Herald Angel” in loud voices just like the Peanuts crowd did in the annual special. One year, a light snow was descending as we trooped out to the side of the house and sang. I even had to rescue the fir tree one year from the rear of a dump truck when an overly zealous person mistook it for a large WEED. Anyway, you get the general idea. Yes, I have to admit honestly that their special memories were sometimes THE gift, the one they had hoped and dreamt of for months. But just as often it was the small, shared moment.

But, this year I would love to nudge the start of a more lasting memory and tradition for your children this holiday season. You can call it a “time capsule of books” for want of a better phrase. It’s EASY! Just pick out some picture books that you think they might like, some holiday inspired and some not. Then, start a small library of these books to be added to each December. Inscribe each book with a small personal memory of the season or of the year past. It can be a feeling, a wish or even a hope for the future. Let it be something that evokes in their mind THAT year besides the date.

Jim Croce wrote a great song called “Time in a Bottle”. Here’s a verse:

 If I could make days last forever

 If words could make wishes come true

 I’d save every day like a treasure and then

 Again, I would spend them with you.

So please begin creating a holiday picture book time capsule with your kids this year with some wonderful picture books. I have some suggestions that follow in the days ahead to help start the process.

Create a capsule to begin a lifetime of reading with memories only YOU can create. It’s a gift worth giving – the gift of yourself!  I leaf through my own time capsule my parents gave me each year!