I’m not 100% sure what brought this to my wife’s attention, but last year she found something that said in Iceland there is a tradition called Jolabokaflod, which translates roughly to “Christmas book flood” in English.
Country Living has an article that talks about how people in Iceland give books for Christmas Eve and then spend the rest of the night curled up reading and drinking a mug of hot chocolate. I mean, how amazing does that sound? That would be most of my winter nights if I didn’t have so many responsibilities, and STL Blues games I can’t miss🤣.
Last summer, after my wife found out about this, we decided that this is a great tradition to embrace. Sadly our Christmas holiday is chaos so we decided to do this mid year for Christmas in July. We took the family to Barnes and Noble. Everyon picked out a physical book, not audio, or e-book, and then we bought a big bag of Peanut M&Ms.
After dinner the Tv was turned off, electronics were put away and we just read. Sounds pretty perfect. Our pre-teen son decided he didn’t want to participate and spent the evening in his room and went to bed early but it was still a great time.
My wife, daughter and I loved it so much, we decided that we were going to do it every year on July 25th. This Year due to busy schedules we did our reading last night July 24th. Which makes sense since this is a Christmas Eve tradition.
This year these are the books we have chosen:
Last night’s chocolate of choice was Dove Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Carmel and was paired with a wonderful Malbec red wine from our favorite resturant/winery Cooper’s Hawk. This year our son read for about 45 min before we let him go to his room but at least we all got to spend some time together reading. It was really nice.
I’m all about Spooky season, but this is a fun little tradition in mid summer to remind us of cooler weather and family togetherness. It’s also a great excuse to buy more books. My wife and I have a problem where it comes to buying books.
What are some of your favorite traditions? Share in the comments.
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