I’m finally getting around to posting our 2025 Advent Book Basket and Printable Labels! We have had a lot happening lately and I am hoping to share a couple updates soon. I’m so sorry to those who have been waiting for these… At least they will now be in the archives for the next time Advent begins on November 30th!
I do have another giveaway for you, so be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post to enter. The winners of this year’s St. Nicholas Giveaway were just announced as well!
Annual Advent Book Basket
The Advent Season in our home includes so many lovely traditions that have slowly grown over the years including our Advent Wreath, Advent Calendars and Jesse Tree, but one of our favorites is counting down the days with our annual Advent Book Basket. Over the years, we’ve built an incredible home library, including many books in Christmas Mosaic and from our children’s ever-growing list of favorite Christmas picture books. Each year, we add new treasures, especially on the feast of St. Nicholas. (Check out this year’s St. Nick books here!)
The length of Advent ranges from 22 to 28 days, beginning on the Sunday closest to the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (November 30th) and embracing four Sundays. The first day of Advent can fall as early as November 27th to as late as December 3rd. This year Advent begins on Sunday, November 30th.
I love mixing old favorites with new finds as I decide which books to wrap up each year for our Advent Book Basket. The kids get just as excited as I do, especially when they unwrap their favorites or discover a carefully chosen addition!
This year I asked my husband and our 15 year old to pick out 10 books each from the Christmas bookshelves upstairs for me. I then added three new books (Mr. Willowby’s Head Over Heals Christmas, A Christmas Wish for Little Dala Horse and The Shepherd’s Coat which is also available here) and a couple of my favorites (Christmas in Heaven and The Donkey’s Dream) to bring the total to 25 to wrap up this year.
Note: The Shepherd’s Coat is Also available directly from Word on Fire – Right now there is a 20% off sale on all books and merchandise in their online store through January. If you spend $50, you will also receive a free copy of The Shepherd’s Coat!
Here’s what made the cut for this year’s Advent Book Basket:
2025 Advent Book Basket
Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
To use all season: All About Advent & Christmas: Sharing the Seasons of Hope & Wonder with Children
- November 30 – 1st Sunday of Advent: The First Christmas
- December 1: Christmas Farm
- December 2: Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree
- December 3: (NEW) Mr. Willowby’s Head Over Heals Christmas
- December 4: The First Christmas Stocking – pull out the stockings to hang
- December 5: Christmas in Heaven – write letters to Christ Child/Saint Nicholas, bake Speculaas or St. Nicholas Cookies, decorate St. Nicholas Chocolate Coins to give to others, and deliver treats!
- December 6 – Feast of St. Nicholas: The Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitcher
- December 7 – 2nd Sunday of Advent, Feast of St. Ambrose: The Christmas Candle – Bake a Honeycomb Cake
- December 8 – Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (Holy Day): The Donkey’s Dream – Decorate Christ Candle for the Immaculate Conception
- December 9 – Feast of St. Juan Diego: Christmas from Heaven
- December 10: The Nutcracker
- December 11: The Little Match Girl
- December 12 – Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Our Lady of Guadalupe Pop-Up Book (Review here – Caution: Very fragile! I keep our pop-ups on a top shelf and don’t let little ones handle them by themselves) – Our Lady of Guadalupe Brunch
- December 13 – Feast of St. Lucy: (NEW) A Christmas Wish for Little Dala Horse – Rorate Mass
- December 14 – 3rd Sunday of Advent/Gaudete (JOY) Sunday: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
- December 15: An Irish Night Before Christmas
- December 16 – Las Posadas: Angela and the Baby Jesus
- December 17 – Ember Wednesday – O Sapientia: God Bless Us, Every One!: The Story Behind a Christmas Carol
- December 18 – O Adonai: The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane (Not actually a Christmas book, but it’s a beautiful book and was handed to me in one of the two stacks I requested so I decided to keep it. It’ll be fun to read to our kids on the day their uncle enters the Discalced Hermits this year, on December 18th! Please keep Fr. Dennis Gordon in your prayers.)
- December 19 – Ember Friday – O Radix Jesse: (NEW) The Shepherd’s Coat (or purchase direct from Word on Fire –
- December 20 – Ember Saturday – O Clavis David: The Shepherd at the Crib and the Cross
- December 21 – 4th Sunday of Advent – O Oriens and Winter Solstice: The Little Drummer Boy
- December 22 – O Rex Gentium: Little Star
- December 23 – O Emmanuel: Christmas in the Barn
- December 24 – Vigil of Christmas: The Wonder Story from St. Augustine Academy Press
Years ago, I traded our original purple and pink wrapping paper for brown paper decorated with reusable purple and pink ribbons (saved annually). I occasionally repurpose brown paper bags or opt for a roll of brown craft paper from the craft store, pairing it with the ribbon and homemade labels.
We’ll unwrap and read one book each night during Advent, following our family rosary. The rest of our book collection will be placed in additional baskets, ready to be enjoyed throughout the seasons of Advent and Christmas.
If you’d like to use my little labels too, you can download my Advent Book Basket Labels for 2025 over at Dropbox.
(Here it the link to the original ones I made back in 2014 that work again this year – these won’t work with Avery labels)
Once again, I also made it to where they could be printed on Avery 5294 High Visibility Round Labels if you’d rather not have to cut them out. Sadly my printer has been struggling lately, as you can see in the picture, despite new ink cartridges… I think I need to take a pink marker to my pink candles to darken them a bit.
Advent Book Basket Giveaway
And now for our annual Advent Book Basket Giveaway – I have another fun prize package sponsored by Shining Light Dolls to send one of you!
Shining Light Dolls Advent Prize Package
Shining Light Dolls Advent Prize Package – Includes: The Jesse Tree Magnetic Tree and Book Set, Angels We Have Heard on High Shaped Book, The Christmas Nativity Magnetic Play Scene and the Jesus Christ the Deliverer Christmas Anticipation Candle sponsored by Shining Light Dolls ($69.95 Value)
Save 10% at Shining Light Dolls with Coupon Code: SHOWEROFROSESBLOG
Please leave a comment on this post and then enter the giveaway using the giveaway box below.
Shining Light Dolls Advent Prize PackageRead about our family traditions:
The Advent Season in Our Catholic Home
Scroll through past posts featuring our Advent Book Baskets
Click here if you are on the home page to get to comment box: Leave a Comment
Love this! So excited to apply these ideas. Making notes! Thanks for sharing!😍
I love seeing your book list each year so that I can start to get ideas on how to build our families library.
You always have great books, Jessica!
Thank you for the book recommendations! And everything shining light dolls does is beautiful!
More wonderful book ideas! Thank you Jessica!
Thank you for always posting your books. It’s so helpful.
Thank you so much for everything you share with us!
Can you actually make your book lists into a registry? 👀
I should do that! I started at one point: https://amzn.to/4po6GaP
The issue was it was linked to a new affiliate account somehow and not the one I have always used here on the blog… so I didn’t want to spend too much time on it till I got it figured out… then never got back to it! 🙂
Thank you for the awesome book suggestions.
Looking forward to updating my wishlist for next year! Books from years past, do you store them to switch out each year? I see some repeats & some new this year. I don’t think I could bring myself to part with any of my Christmas/Avent books!
I love how you repurposed books you already had. This is the first year we are not doing chocolates for an Advent calendar. I wanted to do the Jesse Tree. But SLD was sold out. We are reading pages from Catholic All Years Jesse Tree book.
I enjoy seeing other people’s booklists. I’ve been collecting the ones we had growing up, but now I’m keeping an eye out for what other families like too!
Absolutely love your family and your cute innovative ideas which u have. Its soo difficult to manage household chores, family, kids etc but still you manage and take out time to bring best for your kids. Love you
Looks great!
I really enjoy seeing the book list so I can get ideas for my family library!