Unfinished Business: Nativity Books #35-40

It's almost Lent and I've got to finish my incomplete task from the Nativity Fast or I'll never manage to get things picked up and going on this blog again! I've been avoiding facing this blog because I knew that I never managed to finish posting about our Forty Books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here. In those last days before Christmas, I just lost all my momentum. My blogging here encouraged some family and friends for Christmas gift ideas for my kids. So we finished out the season with quite a few beautiful new Nativity books to add to our collection. They have been enjoyed and then packed away to emerge again this coming December 15. I'll include them in the blog posts next Nativity. However, here are the last six books we read this past season. They are all Arch Books, as I filled in the last days with various Arch Books from our huge collection.

On the Sunday before Christmas we read Abraham's Big Test in honor of the Sunday of the Forefathers.





On the 20th we read Joseph's Christmas Story, which is probably my least favorite of the Arch Books about Christmas. I'll probably omit it next year. Too often the story of Joseph is told with too much adding to the story and not keeping with Orthodox tradition.





On the 21st we read My Christmas Prayer Book, which is a nice way to teach children little prayers of thanksgiving in that they can say.





On the 22nd we read Just Look in the Stable, which has really nice illustrations.

On the 23rd we read Mary's Christmas Story.





And finally, on the 24th we read On a Silent Night.


And with that, I can now go about the business of Lent, with a slightly more clear conscience! This unfinished task is complete!

Nativity Book #34 - Born on Christmas Morn

This is the thirty fourth of my postings about our 40 books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here. 

Today's book was another of our Arch Books which I've blogged about in the past here. It is Born on Christmas Morn. This is book is fine, but not one of favorites. It kind of gets into why Jesus "had" to die for us at the end and isn't entirely an Orthodox representation of the events of Holy Week. But the Christmas part is fine.

Nativity Book #33 - My Merry Christmas

This is the thirty third of my postings about our 40 books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here.

Today's book was another of our Arch Books which I've 

blogged about in the past here. Actually, for this last week, all of the books will be Arch Books. We're down to those in our collection. We've got a few other new books arriving for Christmas, so I might blog about those later and they will be added to our basket next year (and maybe then I'll remove some of the general Bible story books). Today's book is My Merry Christmas Arch Book. It tells the Nativity story, but I like that in the end it talks about how to remember Christ's birth while decorating the tree, and eating delicious food and getting gifts. It's a nice way to explain how some of our regular traditions can be linked to our faith.

Nativity Book #28 - Silent Night

This is the twenty eighth of my postings about our 40 books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here.

Today's book was another book in the Arch Books series by Concordia Press. I posted about this series in the past here. The book is Silent Night and is available from Concordia here. This is just a nice little retelling of the Nativity story with reasonable, but a little too cheesy illustrations. Remember, though, Arch Books are cheap ($2.50 per book), so if you find a few you like, it's easy to order several.

Nativity Book # 10 - The Shepherd's Christmas

This is the tenth of my postings about our 40 books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here.

Wow! It's already day 10 of the Nativity Fast! We're already one quarter of the way to the Feast of the Nativity (at least for those of us on the New Calendar)! This fast always passes too quickly.

Today's book is a nice Christmas book from the Archbooks collection available from Concordia Press. I wrote about this collection here. The Shepherd's Christmas is one of the better books in this series. The illustrations are a little too cartoonish for my taste, but the story is nice. It's short (good for wiggly three year olds) and is a retelling of the Christmas story from the perspective of the shepherds. It is specifically about a little boy shepherd who witnesses the Birth of Christ (and the coming of the angels) on his first night to watch over the sheep with the other shepherds. The message in the end is that though the boy is afraid, he finds comfort in Christ. Today it provided a nice opportunity to stop and talk to the kids about this idea when we're already otherwise distracted by preparations for Thanksgiving!

Nativity Book #2 - Elizabeth's Christmas Story

This is the second of my postings about our 40 books of Nativity. You can read about the tradition here. Today's book is Elizabeth's Christmas Story from the Arch Books series from Concordia Publishing House.

I love this book because it is about my patron saint, and there are not many children's books about the Righteous Elizabeth. It tells the story of the Conception of John the Baptist, the Meeting of Elizabeth and the Mother of God, the Nativity of John the Baptist and the Nativity of Christ. It is part of the Arch Books series, published by a Lutheran publishing house, Concordia. I read Arch Books with my parents as a child and loved them. Of course, they aren't Orthodox, but they are Bible stories and are (usually) pretty true to the Scripture, though sometimes with a little bit of story embellishment. They are all told in rhyming verse which is sometimes a little cutsey, but not all bad. New ones have been published every year since the 1960s. So, there is now a huge set of them and they vary in their quality (especially in the quality of illustrations: some are really cartoonish, others are nicer), but some are quite good. I think the older ones are better than the recently published ones. We have a whole set of around 200 that had been published as of 2004 (I told you we have a lot of books). My oldest son received them as a gift from his great grandmother and uncle a few years ago. I really like having them around because they are great for times when I want a quick rendition of a certain Bible story. There are LOTS of Christmas ones, so you'll see them reappearing as I post about our Christmas books. The other thing that is really nice about them is that they are very inexpensive. If you just want to buy one, it's only about $2.50 and can be purchased directly from Concordia.