Christmas Around the World: A Christmas Holiday Book for Kids

First thing to know, is this book was published in 1995, so 30 years ago. Its definitely for older kids, not preschoolers (age of my son & students).Additionally, the occasional references to pagan traditions are extremely rude and out of touch with the fact that MANY people are returning to Yule & pagan celebrations. One of the drawbacks of a book researched and written 30 years ago.For example, it says about Winter Solstice, "Ancient people, with little understanding of science, believed the sun stood still during the short winter days." Not sure where in the world that "research" was gathered from, but it's inaccurate. Plenty of modern people celebrate the Solstice. Not to mention "ancient" people who worshiped the sun and seasons didn't believe the sun "stood still" 🙄So don't let this book be the only showing of diversity in your home or classroom this winter, for sure.

"Christmas Around the World" is a neat " 8 1/2 inch by 11 inch - 46 page hardback children's Christmas book which introduces children to the cultural celebration and customs of Christmas around the world. The book is beautifully illustrated with full page full color illustrations. The book contains one to two pages of text for each of the following countries explaining their Christmas celebrations: Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany. Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico, The Philippines, Sweden and Alaska in the United States. In addition, there are pages with complete directions for making Christmas Crafts including: Pine Cone Pine Trees, Nativity Scenes, Stars, Christmas Cards, Christmas Cornucopias, Christmas Party Crackers, and Advent Calendars. There is also a page devoted to a pronunciation guide for foreign words found in the text devoted to the various countries. A page is also devoted to Christmas sayings. This book is a delightful way to introduce multi cultural Christmas celebrations to children. The book would be a good resource for the school classroom during the Christmas season and should be part of every elementary school's library. The book would also be valuable to give kids ideas for handmade Christmas gifts and decorations. My only concern is that the stories and information are a slight bit superficial but still very valuable for elementary school children.

This is a great book to let kids know how Christmas is celebrated around the world.

Adorable book and with great information about how other countries celebrate this holiday. I bought it for my toddler and it is too old for them but saving it for the future!!

The book is very nice but I was looking for more of a storybook about Christmas around the world to read to a group of kids. This is an informational book about Christmas customs around the world.

Very interesting reading for my young grandsons who were learning about Christmas customs around the world at their virtual school. This accompanied their studies well. Had some crafts too and the Illustrations were nice also.

This book is PERFECT for any teacher that is wanting to teach Christmas traditions in many countries. There are 12 different countries discussed, a timeline of Christmas & various Christmas 'symbols', and a fact/fiction section that talks about Christmas facts and myths. My students found it very interesting when it was read aloud by one of the parents. It is not a sit down and read it all at once type of book but more of a few countries a day type of book. Definitely glad I purchased to add to my "Christmas Around the World" unit.

This book is a good teacher resource for information on how other countries celebrate their Christmas holidays, but not a very good read-aloud. I teach 3rd graders and I found the vocab. and writing were a bit above the level of typical 3rd graders. Also, it was a bit dry. I would read it, but would edit it as I read it to them. However, it was a good source for information for my purposes as I presented the customs to the class.

interesting information.

It's ok

Short and not quite what I expected.

This is a good multi-cultural book about Christmas that show both religious and non-religious traditions around Christmas. Very interesting. Each segment has a full page of larger text, 3-5 paragraphs on a part of the world and their traditions and then on the opposite page is a full-page illustration. The text can be dry. I don’t think it’s a book that you would sit down with your kids and read cover to cover. But it might be fun to read a segment each night during the Christmas season. This would be an excellent book to use in a classroom. This book is from the early 90s, so I was worried that some of these traditions may have faded out of style. I’d love to see an updated version with the same author. Not sure if I would buy it again. But now that it’s in my Christmas collection, it’s nice to peruse.

This book is central to this year's Christmas ADVENTure. Each day, we are using one chapter of the book as the basis for our activities with our kids. We would read from the book, and then do a craft or cooking activity associated with the country in question. The chapters are short, but contain interesting tidbits of information for each country. It also gives us inspiration for searching for different activities associated with each country, making it easier to search for something on Pinterest or other sites, instead of just searching for something more generic that would have given us too many results to go through.