We shared our Fall and Thanksgiving plans so let’s start getting ready for Christmas or Hanukkah.
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We shared our Fall and Thanksgiving plans so let’s start getting ready for Christmas or Hanukkah.
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We have decorations we use each year, the nativity scene on the bulletin board, the Christmas books displayed in the children's wing and the main library. A small tree, a small Nativity scene. The Library staff's favorite is the Library Book Tree! I think this is the third year for the tree, and it's a bit shorter this time.
Advent reading challenge 2022 v2.pdf. This year we are doing something new at our church library. In order to encourage families to check out our wide selection of Christmas books, we have An Advent Reading Challenge - a children's version and an Adult version. For the kids, we put the books into 4 categories (in bins marked accordingly) and when they read a book in that category, they select a Christmas craft kit that they can take home with them to do with an adult). For the adults, they also read a book from 4 categories and are entered into a drawing to win a gift card to a local bookstore. We are into the 3rd week of this challenge, and circulation is at an all-time high, and lots of families are stopping by the library to see our display of books and check out books. The kids love it too!
This is a great idea!
That sounds like an excellent promotion!
We are meeting on Tuesday morning to decorate for Christmas. During the time we are together decorating, we will spend some time discussing opportunities to reach out to our membership during the Christmas season.
This weekend we will redecorate the library for Christmas. We have four windows and a window in door that opens to main hallway. These are decorated every month. We had up leaf border trim and leaf clings for Fall. For December and January we have snowflake border trim and snowflake clings.
One thing l did with all my seasonal borders is to double side them by gluing strips back to back. That way from inside the library we are not just looking at the plain white backs. Take care of your clings, also. We've used the same Fall and Winter clings now for over 20 years.
We have a small tree for our check out counter, lighted, with lots of mini ornaments. The 2 bulletin boards l have in 2 church hallways will be changed to Christmas theme. We have various other items such as seasonal tablecloths, garland and knickknacks (also for every season and holiday) .
We keep our children's seasonal books on a separate but accessible shelf in the children's area. Because children love these books year round, so why put them away. The adult Christmas themed books are right in with fiction/non-fiction. All Christmas themed books and movies and music have a gold star on the spine. We pull all the books and movies and CDs and put on large display table. Grab and go.
For the next four weeks it is our Christmas open house. We put on some music, have a snack mix served in paper cups that is easy to take with to Sunday school or home. The snack mix is from our church cookbook.
After Christmas we keep up our snowflake borders and trim but switch out the Christmas decor for winter with a snowman theme in January.
I don't know what we do yet since this is going to be our first christmas I am on track to have the library ready to reopen after 40 years of neglect in December it was just a meeting room full of books we are planning to be having a library reopening after church one sunday morning when it is ready. we have one worship service then have fellowship with coffee and snacks afterward before sunday school most sundays so the library opening will be after church the coffee and snacks willl be in the adult sunday school room across from the library instead of in the fellowship hall across the breezeway that morning and I will give a presentation about the library and give people a chance to check out the library.
We don't do a lot of decorating because we don't have space - either floor space, or top of bookcase space or anywhere else! However, there are some things we do/have already done:
We store all our Christmas and Advent books in bins during much of the year, and bring them out at the beginning of November. We have a bookcase-on-wheels in the hallway where we display books featured in our newsletters, and at this time of year, that is where the Christmas fiction and movies reside. Also outside the library we have two stands consisiting of three stacked containers where we put all the children's picture books and family advent devotionals - they are easy to flip through, in these containers, making it a better way to display and for patrons to search for what they want. And inside the library we have an endcap where we place our books which are specifically Advent devotionals.
We also have a Fisher Price Nativity - we store our board books (which live on a bottom shelf) for the season and place the nativity there, so kids can play with it when they come in.