Welcome to our 3rd annual, Brunner family tradition. Most people have seen the Hallmark Christmas in July movies or remember when stores would do the Christmas in July sales. We decided to make this work for us.
For those of you who have not read my post from last year, here is a little information about Icelandic Christmas:
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.
The reason we do this in July is because we do not have time to actually observe this on December 24th. My parents are divorced so I have a lot of families to visit and Christmas is the one holiday we try to see everyone. We are so busy the week before Christmas all the way up to New Years with family events and running from place to place. Since we are so busy during the Christmas Holiday, we decided to have this little bit of joy in the height of summer to give cool vibes and some relaxing quality family time.
To make this authentic, we make a family trip to the book store to pick out new books for the day. We go to bookstores loads of times throughout the year, my wife and I have a book addiction, but this planned trip is special and just as much of a tradition as the night itself.
As I mentioned last year, my son has currently fallen out of love with reading. Dear God I hope it’s just a Phase. We still want to include him in this tradition even though last year was full of complaints and it would be easier to let him sit on his phone in his bedroom. In an attempt to make this easy on him, we offered to buy him car magazines since he is really big into cars and car modifications. Sadly, he left the bookstore empty handed.
This year these are the books we will be reading for our evening of family reading:
For our choice of chocolate we have picked two this year. My wife and my Daughter really love the Brookside Pomegranate, I’m a chocolate and Peanut Butter/caramel guy. The store only had caramel so the decision was easy.
This is one of my favorite traditions that my wife and kids created ourselves. This is so much fun even with my son already complaining and bargaining how much time he has to be bored. I’m looking forward to tonight. So excited to start me new book.
What are some of your favorite traditions?
Brunner's Bar 