The 12 Days of Christmas Mini-Challenge

The 12 Days of Christmas Mini-Challenge

On the first day of Christmas, The 52 Book Club gave to me… a brand new mini-challenge!

This month’s bonus prompts were created by one of our Facebook admin (Thanks, Trisha!) and we’re pretty excited about it. With a month left of 2021, there’s just enough time to squeeze in one final mini-challenge. And what better than a super fun song to inspire us?

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How the 12 Days of Christmas challenge works:

This month’s challenge is all about THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS! This is a popular holiday song that is stuffed with inspiration for your December reads. (You can find the lyrics to the song below.)

1. Choose your difficulty
   This month the number of reads are up to you! You may pick anywhere from 3-12 books to complete this challenge.

2. Each book must be somehow inspired by or connected to the song The 12 Days of Christmas.
   Get creative! The song could relate to the book title, theme, setting, characters, or even the author! Holiday or not, murder mystery or romance or non-fiction, 12 short Christmas stories, a themed series… The possibilities with this one are nearly endless!

** Note: While this is a “12 Days of Christmas” mini-challenge, the books you pick don’t have to be holiday themed. We recognize that not everyone participates in this holiday. The verses to this song are open to wide interpretation and you should be able to complete this challenge using non-seasonal reads too.

This month, the prompts are up to you — they just have to be somehow inspired by The 12 Days of Christmas!

Share your picks in our Facebook group, Goodreads group, or on Instagram using the hashtag #the52bookclub2021. You can choose to read these books in addition to your regular 52 Book Club reads, or you can combine them with prompts still left on your 2021 list. As always, get as creative as you like with the prompts and have fun!

The 12 Days of Christmas Song Lyrics:
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five golden rings
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree

Examples & Tips:

• Pick and choose whichever parts of the song you’d like for inspiration. You could use a different line for each of your challenge picks, or you could read four books all somehow related to the same line (Example: all of your books could be related to the line “Nine ladies dancing.” Or you could pick one book matching line 3, one matching line 7, etc.)

• You could also choose to find your inspiration from the song title itself.

• A lot of holiday books have titles inspired by this song. Use the Goodreads search function and try typing in various lines from the song to see what pops up. Or, check out our 12 Days of Christmas Goodreads List: here.

• Feeling uninspired? Get as creative as you like! For instance, “A partridge in a pear tree” could be interpreted as a book by an author whose last name is Partridge. Or a book with the word “pear” in the title, or a pear tree on the cover.

• Books picked for this challenge don’t have to be holiday themed or specifically related to Christmas. There is a ton of variety with this song! As always, if you think a book fits the challenge — it does!

So whether you choose 12 Christmas stories, or 3 murder mysteries and a romance, it’s all just for fun! This is our last chance to squeeze in a few more 2021 reads. So let’s get creative and see what we can come up with!

What books would YOU recommend for this 12 Days of Christmas mini-challenge?