The “Cole Family Christmas” Featured for Bloggy Giveaways
October 27, 2008 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Parenting
Bloggy Giveaways is here again!
Here at One Book Two Book we’re offerning the Cole Family Christmas as the Bloggy Giveaways prize. This is a lovely book with colorful illustrations, relating the story of a very special Christmas in the Cole family, who lived in the coal mining town of Benham, Kentucky.
This was one of those stories, told orally from one generation to another, which Hazel Cole Kendle and her granddaughter-in-law, Jennifer Lui Bryan, thought should be preserved in writing. It’s an example of passing a family legacy on to future generations. The Cole family has given you a Christmas story book to treasure in your family, too.
Giveaway Guidelines
The giveaway is open to those who live in the United States or have a mailing address here. The dates are Oct. 27-31, at 11:59 AM eastern.
Leave a comment below. (Include your e-mail address in the sign-in procedure, so I’ll know how to contact you. E-mail addresses are not made public.)
Let us know if you have any holiday family traditions you’d like to record. (I’ll do a future Writing Tips post about preserving family stories.)
(Amazon image for Cole Family Christmas)
I would love to have this book! We have a tradition every Christmas Eve to go to my mom’s and have steak and listen to Christmas music and then open presents!
i would love to win this! it’s exactly the kind of book we eat up in our family lol
no special traditions here- maybe we will discover one!
We love Christmas in our family. We have cookie decorating contests and we all open our presents one at a time in a round-robin style-makes the festivities last longer!
No special family traditions here either.
What a beautiful book. Our children are still young, but I hope they have great memories of time spent with family. Thanks!
cross_home2001 (at) yahoo (dot) com
We seriously have so many traditions and each one is so precious and has such meaning…they are all small ones that add up to each year being really special
(most of the traditions were born out of hard times where mamaw & papaw couldn’t afford to do all the Christmassy things that cost money, so they are esp. important since they focus on family and Christ and love and just enjoying the small things…) hm, now I need to go blog about some of these traditions since they are front and center in my scatter-brain right now lol
Most of them trace back to my grandparents and beyond…with both of them being gone now, I feel it is more important than ever to keep my children wrapped in those traditions so that they never forget the love that mamaw & papaw had for all of us
ty so much for the chance to win AND for bringing these warm memories to mind this chilly fall evening!
Great choice….count me in please. I love Christmas Family stories to read.
I want to read this! Our Christmas Eve tradition is to eat soup (chili and oyster stew) and then go to church together with the whole family!
our traditions are watching all our fav Christmas movies and decorating our home, complete with 4 trees, large and small, colored and white!
i would love to document for my family what christmases were like for me adn my brother growing up…he was killed one year ago and so I am the only one that knows these stories and I would love for my sons to know about them
I’d love to begin a tradition with my 7 month old son of reading Christmas stories to him during the holidays.
In our family we have special foods on Christmas eve, like fish, pierogies, halupki and we pass around a wafer from church. When doing so, we speak about the family members who are no longer with us, which is bittersweet.
This book seems charming and a good educational resource too! Thank you!
We like to do “Secret Santa” where we leave a plate of cookies on someone’s doorstep, ring the doorbell, and run. Fun!
We do the normal activities that evolve around Christmas. We have also started playing games with our extended family! We play Trivia, Password and other various games. We have a blast. Thanks, Cindi
This sounds like a beautiful story and the giveaway is just in time for the holidays. I would very much love to read this.
Thank you for the giveaway!
Wonderful giveaway – I would love to read this! As for family traditions – our family is all about traditions. One is our Tree Day – when we spend the whole day shopping for a live tree and decorating it with snacks, music, movies and the whole family around.
I made a horrible mistake by ordering just ONE of these books. I would LOVE to have another to send to my EX MIL. See, I’m still nice.
We have a tradition of stringing popcorn and cranberries each year for our tree. When the tree comes down, we drape the popcorn garland outside on the trees. Guess who benefits?
Both of us. The birds AND us. It’s just a win win all the way around!
We have a tradition of lighting luminaria’s on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to share it with my dd.
One of our family traditions is reading through a variety of Christmas stories each year and this book would be a wonderful addition to our collection.
My mom and I make Christmas cookies together. This year my 3 year old gets to join the tradition!
The one thing my family use to do was take a picture of each one of siblings when there little in this huge Christmas stocking. Each one of us kids had are picture taken in it. But the stocking got rather ragged looking over the years and was since tossed. Thanks for the great giveaway.
I make a Christmas stocking for each of my children when they are born. I’ve made one for aunts, uncles, cousins and my grandparents too.
Fun! We get together for Christmas eve and act out the nativity story with our nativity puppets.
This book looks like such fun- One of our family Christmas Traditions is Christmas Pillowcases.
Thanks so much for the AWE-some Give-oh-Way!
audrajjensen(at)msn.com
We open up holiday pajamas on christmas eve and have breakfast the next morning in them.
Sounds like a great book. We like to watch Christmas movies on Christmas Eve, bake cookies, and read special stories at bed time. Thanks for the giveaway!
princess3sah(at)cs(dot)com
I would really love to win this book for my son…The reviews have been so positive.
owatz (AT)telus (DOT) net
This book looks like a book that would become a family favorite!!
amitymatthia[at]hotmail.com
go to church together on eve
watch a christmas movie with hot cocoa
Looks like a great book and love the the story behind the story!I am in- thanks- please enter me thankyou..mrs.mommyyatgmail.com
Thanks for the giveaway
I don’t actually have any traditions! 
We go out one night and drive around to see the light displays. When we return we sit around the tree sipping hot cocoa or eggnog while listening to Christmas music.
Growing up we always read Christmas stories like this and drank hot chocolate in the days leading up to Christmas. Those are some great memories.
Our Christmas tradition was burning a set of rolls in the oven. This happened at my aunt’s house EVERY year! It became a family joke!
We do a fesat of favorite foods on Christmas Eve. Thanks for the giveaway!
Our family tradition is to go to the Family Christmas Eve party every year – then Christmas morning at home. Stockings first!
Great movie to start watching every Christmas. Start a new tradition. Tradition to record – Everyones reaction to the Christmas lights. We go every year to look at.Thanks for the giveaway. semtaylor(at)yahoo(dot)com
We always go to grandma’s (even as adults) Christmas eve and watch christmas movies when we get home.A tradition my husband and I started was to buy a Hallmark ornament every year of one signifying something important from that year.
We have lots of family traditions but not really anything that could be recorded in writing, more like in photos or video.
Our tradition that seems to have started on it’s own, is having breakfast together before we open our presents. Pretty amazing since we have a 7 year old.
This sounds perfect for our Advent Read-Aloud time! Thanks for introducing me to it. And thanks for hosting a great contest. I hope I win!
Oops – I meant to elaborate on our Advent read-aloud time….our tradition. We stop homeschooling at the beginning of Advent and do “Christmas School” which we end with a lighting of the Advent Candle and a family-cuddle-time-while-Daddy-reads each night to wrap up the day.
i love christmas, and my parents were both reared in Kentucky in Coal mining towns, so this book would be fun for me to read.
I love our family traditions but the aren’t the type to write down…would love to read about them ….thank you for offering this…cvdmvega@yahoo.com
We have a slightly after Christmas tradition where we hang up our stockings on New Years Eve. I look forward to that more than I do Christmas I think *L*
Love Christmas stories!