Christmas Tradition: The Donkey in the Living Room

We have a new Christmas tradition we've implemented this year, and I want to share it in case you're looking for something to do with your little people to try to keep the focus on Christ at Christmas.  My sister-in-law, Emily, gave us this book last month, and it has gone over really well this Christmas season.  The book is called The Donkey in the Living Room, and it starts 9 days before Christmas and walks you through to the birth of Christ through the eyes of different characters who were involved (donkey, camel, Mary, sheep, Joseph, angel, etc.).  The book explains what you do, but in a nutshell you start 9 days before Christmas, and each day you wrap up one of the characters from a nativity scene (as directed by the book) and have you kiddos open the wrapped character, then you read the telling of the story from that character's perspective.  These are short, rhyming synopses of what was happening, and are perfect for my 3 & 5 year olds who can't sit toooooo long.  :)

I'm not sure if this book is for sale anywhere but Amazon, but I do want to add the disclaimer that the nativity items you need to wrap do NOT come with the book - you'll have to come up with those on your own.  My mother-in-law has given us a few nativity sets over the years, so we were able to piece together most of the characters, but if you don't have a nativity scene, you might need to go to Hobby Lobby to piece together the characters you'll need (we still need to get a camel!).  It might be too late to start this tradition this Christmas, but it is something to think of for next year (maybe even get a nativity set on clearance after Christmas and put it away for next year!).