December 2024
Tis the Season!
Gear up for the holidays by starting at your library. Resources on holiday traditions, special recipes, decorating ideas, and much more can help make your next celebration truly memorable. The library has a variety of resources for the holiday season, from history, symbols, and traditions, to crafts, decorations, and favorite children’s stories.
You might begin with Barbara Scott’s The Holiday Handbook, which offers more than 700 fresh ideas and creative approaches for story-time activities cultivating birthday, anniversary, holiday, and other seasonal traditions for a variety of occasions, from Arbor Day to Yom Kippur. To learn about holidays in other lands, check out Heather Moehn’s World Holidays: A Watts Guide for Children. Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary is reference guide to popular, ethnic, religious, national, and ancient holidays, offering insight into more than 3,000 observances from all 50 states and more than 100 nations.
Kathlyn Gay’s African-American Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations offers insight into the history, customs, and symbols associated with both traditional and contemporary religious and secular events observed by Americans of African descent. Discover the passion, imagination, and joy of age-old traditions of India in A Very Indian Christmas, an anthology of essays, stories, poems, and hymns – both in English and translated from India’s other languages – that captures the distinctive magic of Christmas in India and in the Indian diaspora. Arthur O. Waskow’s Seasons of Our Joy is a modern guide to Jewish holidays, complete with seasonal recipes by Rose Gertz.
COOKING & CRAFTS
To add some tasty sensations to your celebrations, try Baking for the Holidays: 50+ Treats for a Festive Season, written by Sarah Kieffer, includes recipes for brunches, parties, cookie swaps, and gift-giving. Phyllis Glazer offers more than 200 seasonal holidays recipes and their traditions in her book, The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking.
Looking for some fun crafts to do during the holidays? Try Holiday Crafting and Baking with Kids, by Jessica Strand. This book offers creative and straightforward craft projects and baking recipes to celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, as well as the fall/winter seasons. Discover whimsical homemade craft projects and gift ideas for family, friends, neighbors, or teachers in Taste of Home Handmade Christmas.
Discover how to fold napkins for a decorative touch to your festive table settings in Jill Stovall’s Fabrigami. Bugsy Drake – Second Stew on Bravo’s Below Deck Med series – transforms the art of tablescaping into an adventure that guests will never forget! She shares her tricks and ideas in The Art of Tablescaping: Deck Out Your Table with the Queen of Theme.
FBCL staff have compiled some fun, crafty, how-to videos on YouTube for children and adults over the past few years. Click here for FBCL’s Youth Arts & Crafts and here for the Adult Arts & Crafts playlist.
MUSIC
From the traditional sounds of Bach, Tchaikovsky, or Handel, to more eclectic renditions by Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, Pentatonix, or Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, FBCL has a variety of musical selections on CD and digitally on hoopla to add to the holiday spirit. Classics such as Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker can be enjoyed on DVD, CD, or as a book to be read on a quiet winter’s evening.
MOVIES
Looking for some holiday movies to watch with the kids? FBCL has digital selections on hoopla and Access Video on Demand (or Access Video: Just for Kids) that can be accessed at any time of the day or night!
Whether your family observes Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Chinese New Year, or one of the many other celebrations around the world, Fort Bend County Libraries wishes you a safe and joyous holiday season.
More selections to consider for the holiday season include:
Life from Scratch: Family Traditions That Start with You, by Vanessa Lachey
How to Celebrate Everything: Recipes & Rituals for Birthdays, Holidays, Family Dinners, & Every Day in Between, by Jenny Rosenstrach.
A Piñata in a Pine Tree: A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas, by Pat Mora.
The Jolliest Bunch: Unhinged Holiday Stories, by Danny Pellegrino.
Atlas of Christmas: The Merriest, Quirkiest Holiday Traditions from Around the World, by Alex Palmer.
This is Christmas, Song by Song: The Stories Behind 100 Holiday Hits, by Annie Zaleski.
Christmas Past: The Fascinating Stories Behind Our Favorite Holiday’s Traditions, by Brian Earl.
Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting, by Jim Murphy.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career & Revived Our Holiday Spirits, by Les Standiford.
Holiday Symbols & Customs: A Guide to the Legend and Lore Behind the Traditions, Rituals, Foods, Games, Animals, and Other Symbols and Activities Associated with Holidays and Holy Days, Feasts and Fasts, and Other Celebrations, Covering Ancient, Calendar, Religious, Historic, Folkloric, National, Promotional, and Sporting Events, as Observed in the United States and Around the World, edited by Helene Henderson.