A book on Christmas Eve: Iceland's tradition at home
In Iceland, Christmas Eve follows a fixed pattern. At six o’clock the church bells ring, dinner is served, presents are opened, and among them there is almost always a book. That book is read the same evening, with something warm to drink. Icelanders have a word for it: Jólabókaflóð, the Christmas book flood.
It sounds like a custom someone invented for social media, but it has been going for around eighty years. And it slots neatly into a much newer British habit: the Christmas Eve box.
Where the book flood comes from
The custom took shape around the Second World War. Iceland had strict import restrictions, so there was little in the shops to give. Paper was less restricted than most goods, and books became the present you could still buy (Wikipedia, citing NPR 2012).
Since 1944, every Icelandic household has received the Bókatíðindi free in November: a catalogue of every book coming out before Christmas. Publishers release most of their new titles in the autumn because the whole book year revolves around it (Visit Iceland). The result is that books are the most popular Christmas present in the country.
What the cosy picture leaves out
Outside Iceland, Jólabókaflóð is usually presented as a gentle domestic ritual: blankets, hot chocolate, a silent house. That is partly true. Critics point out that it is first and foremost a commercial peak, the busiest selling season of the Icelandic book trade, and that the cosy image is mostly what travelled abroad.
That need not put you off. It makes the idea easier to borrow: you are not copying an ancient ritual, only the one element that makes it worth doing. A present you use together, that same evening.
How it fits the Christmas Eve box
The Christmas Eve box is a newer habit in Britain. A small box opened on the 24th, usually with new pyjamas, a hot chocolate sachet, a treat and something to do. It barely featured in British newspapers before the mid-2010s and is thought to borrow from the continental custom of giving presents on Christmas Eve (NationalWorld).
Put the two together and the book is the obvious centre of the box. Everything else in it is used up or worn; the book is the one thing that turns the box into an evening. A few things that help:
- One book per child, not three. A pile is a present moment; one book is a reading moment.
- Open the box after tea, not in the morning. The point is that the book closes the day.
- Read it straight away, together. With little ones you read aloud. With children who read by themselves, it works just as well if everyone sits quietly with their own book. For an eight-year-old it is surprisingly special that the grown-ups read too.
- Choose something that finishes in one sitting. Not a thick adventure that has to wait until Boxing Day after page three.
When it does not work
Not every child wants calm on Christmas Eve. After a long day of excitement, small children are often past it, and then a story on the sofa becomes a battle rather than a wind-down. Move it to Christmas Day or skip it for a year.
For children who experience reading mainly as schoolwork, a book as a present can feel like homework in wrapping paper. Choose a comic, a search-and-find book or something about their current obsession, not a title that is “good for you”.
The version without a shop
You do not need a new book for this. A library book works, as does an old favourite of yours that you read to them for the first time. Or write a short story yourself about your child’s year, with the things you did together, and read that aloud. It costs an evening and often becomes the book that is kept longest.
A book about this child
If you want a book that belongs to the evening itself, a story in which your child plays the lead can work well. It has a beginning and an end, it reads aloud in one go, and a child hears their own name in a Christmas story. Our page on a personalised Christmas book has storylines with Father Christmas, Nova the reindeer and Pip the elf, plus a book we actually made.
It does not have to be the only present. In our piece on Christmas gifts children remember we look at why a present with a story around it tends to stay with a child longer than the most expensive toy. And if you are looking more broadly for a children’s book as a gift, the different kinds are gathered there.
What remains
The lovely thing about the Icelandic custom is not the book, but the agreement around it: one evening a year when everyone reads, at the same time, in the same house. That agreement costs nothing and only asks that you keep it up for a few years. Children rarely remember which book they were given. They do remember that Christmas Eve was the night the house went quiet and everyone read.