A Very Noisy Christmas - Paperback

A Very Noisy Christmas — A Fun and Joyful Retelling of the Christmas Story

We often think of the first Christmas as a silent night.

Peaceful. Quiet. A gentle baby sleeping in a manger while angels hover softly overhead and shepherds tiptoe reverently through the darkness.

But what if the first Christmas was actually a great deal noisier than that?

What if it was filled with the sound of angels shouting with joy, shepherds running and calling out to one another, a baby crying in a stable, and the whole creation breaking into the kind of noise that only the most extraordinary news in the history of the universe could produce?

A Very Noisy Christmas is a wonderfully fun, genuinely interactive, and joyfully energetic retelling of the Christmas story for children aged 2 to 4 — one that invites young children not just to listen but to join in. To make noise. To shout and sing and respond to the most exciting birth announcement the world has ever heard with the kind of whole-body, unselfconscious, utterly delightful noise that only very young children can produce with complete abandon.

This is Christmas as it was always meant to be celebrated — not in hushed reverence alone, but with the joyful, exuberant, thoroughly noisy enthusiasm that the arrival of God’s Son into the world genuinely deserves.

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Beyond Silent Night

The association of Christmas with silence and peacefulness is beautiful — and not entirely wrong. There is genuine wonder and genuine stillness in the nativity scene. The intimacy of a mother and her newborn child. The quiet of a stable late at night.

But the Bible’s account of the first Christmas is also full of noise. The angels did not whisper their announcement to the shepherds — they proclaimed it with the kind of glory that left those shepherds terrified before they were overjoyed. The shepherds did not quietly make their way to Bethlehem — they hurried, and when they had seen the baby they went out and told everyone they met what they had heard and seen. Mary sang. Zechariah prophesied. Simeon broke into praise. Anna gave thanks to God loudly enough for everyone in the temple to hear.

The first Christmas was a noisy event. And A Very Noisy Christmas captures that noise — and invites the youngest children to add their own voices to it.

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An Interactive Story for the Very Young

What makes A Very Noisy Christmas particularly special for children aged 2 to 4 is its regular invitations to make noise — built into the text at natural moments throughout the story, inviting children to respond to what they are hearing with their voices, their bodies, and their whole enthusiastic selves.

This interactivity is not just fun — though it is genuinely, delightfully fun. It is also genuinely effective as a way of helping very young children engage with and remember the story they are hearing. Children at this age learn through participation. They learn through movement and sound and response. A story that invites them in — that gives them a role to play, a sound to make, a response to offer — is a story they engage with far more deeply than one they simply observe.

By the time the story is finished, children who have made noise throughout it will have participated in the Christmas story in a way that makes it genuinely their own — a story they were part of, not just a story they heard.

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The Profound Message at the Heart of the Noise

For all its fun and its noise, A Very Noisy Christmas carries a genuinely profound message at its centre — the message that is the reason for all the noise in the first place:

The birth of God’s Son, Jesus, who came to make a friendship with God possible for everyone.

This is the truth that made the angels shout. This is the truth that sent the shepherds running. This is the truth that has been making noise across twenty centuries of Christmas celebrations and that gives every child who hears this story their own reason to join in.

Not just a baby in a manger. Not just a warm seasonal story. But the arrival of the Son of God into the world — the moment when heaven came to earth, when God became a child, when the friendship between God and human beings that sin had broken was opened up again through the one who came to restore it.

That is the noise A Very Noisy Christmas is making. And it invites every child who hears it to make that noise too.

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What This Book Will Help Your Child Do

• Encounter the Christmas story in a genuinely fun, engaging, and personally participatory way — through regular invitations to join in with noise, shouts, and songs
• Understand at an age-appropriate level the central message of Christmas — that Jesus came to make friendship with God possible for everyone
• Develop a genuine love for the Christmas story through the pleasure of interactive read-aloud participation that makes the story genuinely their own
• Build the kind of warm, joyful, embodied memory of the Christmas story that active participation uniquely provides — carrying the truth of the nativity in a form that is associated with fun, family, and genuine celebration
• Experience Christmas not just as a seasonal event but as the most exciting news that has ever been announced — news worth making noise about
• Begin forming early the instinct that the right response to the gospel is joy — expressed with the whole self, loudly and enthusiastically and without embarrassment

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Who Should Use This Book?

A Very Noisy Christmas is ideal for:

• Parents of children aged 2 to 4 wanting a fun, interactive, faith-rich Christmas story that gets their toddlers genuinely participating in the telling of the nativity
• Families wanting a Christmas read-aloud tradition that is joyful, energetic, and genuinely engaging for the very youngest members of the household
• Grandparents looking for a delightful, meaningful, and genuinely fun Christmas gift for young grandchildren that introduces the Christmas story in the most accessible and enjoyable way possible
• Sunday school teachers and children’s ministry workers wanting a noisy, interactive Christmas resource for toddler groups and preschool Christmas events
• Churches planning Christmas family services, toddler nativity events, or festive outreach and wanting a resource that gets the very youngest children actively participating in the Christmas story
• Toddler groups and parent and child groups wanting a fun, Christmas-themed read-aloud resource that is appropriate for children of mixed backgrounds while centring on the real meaning of Christmas
• Any family in India wanting to give their very youngest children a joyful, interactive, and genuinely gospel-centred introduction to the Christmas story — one that invites them to celebrate the birth of Jesus with all the noise and enthusiasm the occasion deserves

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A Perfect Christmas Gift

A Very Noisy Christmas is specifically identified as a wonderful gift or stocking stuffer for children aged 2 to 4 — and it is easy to see why. It is:

• The right size and the right format for young children to hold and engage with
• Beautifully illustrated and visually engaging for the youngest readers
• Interactive enough to hold a toddler’s attention from beginning to end
• Theologically faithful enough to give parents genuine confidence in what it is communicating
• Fun enough to be read again and again — which is exactly what toddlers will want to do

Whether given as a Christmas gift to a young child in your own family, shared with a toddler group, distributed at a church Christmas event, or used in a Sunday school nativity activity — A Very Noisy Christmas is a resource that serves beautifully in every context.

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About the Very Best Bible Stories Series

A Very Noisy Christmas is part of the Very Best Bible Stories series — a collection of Bible storybooks designed to bring the stories of Scripture to life for the very youngest children in an accessible, engaging, and genuinely faith-forming way. Each title in the series is crafted with the same commitment to both genuine enjoyment and genuine theological faithfulness that characterises A Very Noisy Christmas.

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Make Some Noise

The angels made noise. The shepherds made noise. The whole heavenly host broke into the kind of praise that shook the night sky over Bethlehem with the sound of the best news the world had ever heard.

Christmas is a noisy event. It always was. And A Very Noisy Christmas is an invitation to every young child — and every parent who reads it with them — to add their own voices to the noise that has been going on ever since that first extraordinary night.

Because the arrival of God’s Son is worth making noise about. Now. Always. Together.