When I was growing up, my family had a few special Christmas traditions. One of the ones I remember most was my dad sitting us down on Christmas (I don’t remember if it was before or after presents) and reading the Christmas story from the Bible.

My dad wasn’t a very energetic story-reader. He didn’t give the different characters fun voices.

But me and my brother knew that this story was important, because my dad made it important.

Maybe you have a similar tradition. Maybe you’d like to start one.

If you’d like to read the Christmas story as a family this year, I’ve got a few tips and ideas, as well as the full list of Scripture references for the Christmas story (so that you don’t need to do a Google search).

If you’d like to read the whole Christmas story from start to finish, there’s a few different places to pull from, since the different gospels give different angles of the story. Here’s the full list:

1. John 1:1-5, 14 (Eternal Word made flesh)
2. Luke 1:5-25 (Zechariah’s vision)
3. Luke 1:26-56 (Mary’s vision and trip)
4. Matthew 1:18-25 (Joseph’s first dream)
5. Luke 2:1-20 (Bethlehem & Shepherds)
6. Matthew 2:1-12 (Magi)
7. Matthew 2:13-23 (To Egypt and Nazareth)

Reading the whole Christmas story from the references above will take the average person 12 minutes to read. (But if you’ve got kids that barely sit around long enough to watch a full Tik Tok video, numbers 3-6 are the core of the story…but don’t tell anyone I told you to skip parts)

Maybe one of the parent will read the whole thing. Maybe you’ll take turns reading passages. Maybe you can act it out as a family (I’ve done this for middle school youth group before…it’s hilarious)

Whether or not you decide to try this out this year, I hope your Christmas celebration as a family is a good one.