Gear up for the holidays by starting at your library. Resources on holiday traditions & folklore, special recipes, decorating ideas & crafts, music & movies, favorite children’s stories, and much more can help make your next celebration truly memorable.

Classic holiday movies, such as It’s a Wonderful Life (on DVD), Miracle on 34th Street (on DVD and hoopla), and Holiday Inn (DVD and hoopla music), are available in the libraries’ audiovisual collections. A wide variety of holiday music is also available on CD or digital download. From the traditional sounds of Bach, Vivaldi, or Handel, to more eclectic renditions by Kenny G., Mannheim Steamroller, or Trans-Siberian Orchestra, FBCL has a variety of musical selections to add to the holiday spirit.

If you would like to create new traditions for your own family, get some great ideas from Meg Cox’s book, The Book of New Family Traditions. The book Holiday Symbols & Customs provides details on traditions for more than 320 holidays around the world. Jenny Rosenstrach’s book How to Celebrate Everything offers recipes and traditions for a wide variety of holidays and special occasions.

Robert St. John has ideas about “the new celebratory cuisine of the South” in his cookbook, Deep South Parties: How to Survive the Southern Cocktail Hour Without a Box of French-onion Soup Mix, a Block of Processed Cheese, or a Cocktail Weenie.

If you’re a DIYer, the library can help you discover festive holiday touches that you can create yourself. Get ideas for super-simple tablescapes from Christopher Lowell, The Hassle-Free Host. In her book Beautiful Winter, floral designer Edle Catharina Norman shares ideas for using seasonal materials and flowers to put together entrancing and easy-to-assemble home projects – from festive garlands to fun table décor. Learn how to create whimsical paper shapes with Florence Temko’s book Origami Holiday Decorations for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Relive memories of holidays past! Fans of radio theater -- popular in the 1930s & 1940s -- can recreate the cozy intimacy of gathering around the radio for special holiday stories by checking out recordings of those same shows from the library. Check out “Radio’s Greatest Christmas Shows” on CD, and listen as Jack Benny describes the challenges of Christmas shopping on a shoe-string budget, hear Red Skelton tell the story of the Little Christmas Tree, and catch many other holiday radio stories from yesteryear.  From our hoopla digital collection, download Classic Radio’s Greatest Christmas Shows for even more festive radio tales!

Check out the book A Literary Christmas for a seasonal compilation of poems, short stories, and prose extracts by some of the greatest poets and writers in the English language.

Whether you are recalling fond memories of holidays past or creating new traditions for a lifetime of memories to come, start today at the library!