Childhood Reading Day

I was watching a Hallmark movie the other day called The Christmas Quest. They are films you can very easily take your brain out to watch and I frequently do! The film itself was a very different example of the genre, being set in Iceland and reflecting on the genuine Icelandic myth of the 13 Yule Lads. It’s a great piece of folklore that I may base a blog on nearer Christmas. Anyway, at one point in the movie one of the characters mentioned Jólabókaflóð or Christmas Book Flood. This is a traditional celebration of reading where, on the night of Christmas Eve, people give books to each other and then settle down to read them. It’s a fantastic idea and it is the basis of my own holiday Childhood Reading Day.

Taking place on December 28 this new festival will give everyone a chance to recover from the excesses of Christmas, which I absolutely love by the way, and to spend time with family, friends or just your memories. You either find, buy or are given a book from your childhood that you loved and you spend as much time as you like rereading it on the day itself and maybe on the following days. Now that’s the personal part of the holiday. This holiday, however, is meant to be a time for sharing with those who are close to you. You can tell your partner, children, grandchildren or friends why this book means so much to you. Maybe share stories or thoughts about your younger self to allow others to find out something about what you were like as a child. I say that because all too often, in the West in particular, we criticise people for revisiting their childhood selves. We tell them to ‘grow up’ if they are watching or reading something for a younger age group, and forget how important those years are and how we should keep in touch with them. I think it comes from the Bible verse requiring us to ‘put away childish things’ which we have taken to mean that we need to completely cut our current selves off from our younger selves. We do this at our detriment because it is that attitude that removes a lot of the wonder from life.

The date is movable but the sentiment is one that we should hold to all year round. If you live in the UK, value children’s imagination and you want to encourage those who cannot otherwise access books to brighten up their lives, go to  https://www.booktrust.org.uk/ and take a look at their Christmas appeal. If you live elsewhere there will be similar organisations in your country.

Happy Childhood Reading Day