Write a Christmas story with your child, one chapter at a time

Every December a child somewhere is asked what they want for Christmas and a parent wonders what on earth to get a grandparent who has everything. There is one present that answers the second question and keeps the first one busy for a few weeks: a story, written by your child, with their name on the front.

You do not need to be good at this. You need about fifteen minutes, a few times in December, and the willingness to let the story get a bit silly. The rule is the same one this whole site runs on: your child decides what happens, and somebody else writes it down.

Why bother

Partly because it is a nice thing to do on a dark evening. There is also a real gap here. The National Literacy Trust’s 2026 survey of 125,375 children found that just under three in ten of those aged eight to eighteen, 28.7%, enjoy writing in their free time. Among 14 to 16 year olds it is one in four.

We would not claim a story at Christmas fixes that, and nobody can. But the writing most children meet is writing they are marked on. A story that exists only because they wanted to know what happened next is a different thing, and nobody is going to take a red pen to it.

The plan, by age

The age is a guide, and the age ranges piece goes into why the same idea reads so differently at three and at ten.

How to do it

Pick a starter, not a plot. Do not plan the ending. Take one line from the list below and ask what happens next.

Give them decisions, not blank pages. “What happens next?” is a big question at half past six. “Is the thing in the box alive?” is a small one. If they get stuck, ask who is in the room, what they can hear, or what somebody is holding.

Keep each sitting short. Ten or fifteen minutes. End on something unresolved if you can, because that is what brings them back on Thursday. There is more on this in how long a bedtime story should be.

Read the last bit back first. It takes a minute, and it gets everybody back into the story. It also lets them hear their own idea in a proper sentence, which most children find quite thrilling.

Do not correct it. If the reindeer is called Sandwich, the reindeer is called Sandwich. If the villain turns out to be Nana, ask Nana to be a good sport.

Thirty Christmas story starters

Each one has a question in it, which is what makes it a starter rather than a description. If you want more that have nothing to do with Christmas, we have forty more story starters.

Something has gone wrong

1. Father Christmas has delivered everything to the wrong street.
2. The reindeer has eaten the list.
3. Every present in the house is ticking.
4. The fairy on top of the tree has gone, and there are tiny footprints.
5. It snowed in the kitchen, and only in the kitchen.
6. The turkey has left a note.
7. All the Christmas lights in town went out, one street at a time.
8. The elf who was meant to be on watch is fast asleep in your slipper.

Something has arrived

9. There is a parcel under the tree with no name on it, and it is warm.
10. A very small reindeer has been found in the garden shed.
11. A Christmas card has arrived, dated a hundred years from now.
12. Somebody has built a snowman in the front room overnight.
13. A letter has come back from the North Pole marked “Who told you?”
14. The new advent calendar has a twenty-fifth door, and it is locked.
15. A robin keeps tapping on the window at the same time every day.
16. The train set has started running on its own, and it is carrying something.

Somebody has a secret

17. Your brother has been sneaking out to feed something behind the garage.
18. The man playing Father Christmas at the shop knows your name.
19. Grandad has a sleigh in his allotment shed, and he will not talk about it.
20. The school nativity donkey is real, and only you have noticed.
21. Your cat goes out every Christmas Eve and comes back with a medal.
22. The snowman across the road moves when nobody is looking.

Somewhere strange

23. The back of the wardrobe is full of snow.
24. The North Pole has a lost property office.
25. There is a town where it has been Christmas Eve for thirty years.
26. Somebody has found the place where lost gloves go.
27. A sledge goes down the hill and does not stop at the bottom.
28. The Christmas tree has a very small staircase.
29. The moon has put up decorations.
30. Inside the biggest bauble on the tree, there is a tiny house with its lights on.

Making it into something you can give

This is the bit that turns a game into a present, and it is simple.

• On paper. Write it out, leave half of each page for a drawing, staple the pages or tie them with ribbon. Give it a title page and a “by”. A grown-up writing “first edition” inside the cover goes down well.
• On Taleium. You say what happens and it writes the chapter, in the words for the age you picked. You can read it aloud or share it with a grandparent by link. On Premium, a finished story prints as a proper book, with a title page and chapter openings, or saves as a PDF.

The free plan covers one story of three chapters, which is exactly the length we would suggest for a child under six anyway. If you want to try it, start a story and see how the first chapter goes.

Either way, leave a few days. Things that get printed on 23 December tend to meet a printer that has run out of ink.

A note on the grandparents

If a grandparent is far away, this works well as something to do together. One chapter over a video call, with the child telling the story and the grandparent asking “and then what?” is a better call than most. Let the grandparent be in the story. They will not mind, whatever happens to them.

The short version

• Your child decides what happens. Somebody else can do the writing.
• Start in the first week of December, and keep each sitting short.
• Take a starter, not a plot, and end on a question.
• Do not correct it.
• Give it a title page and a “by”, and it is a present.

The figures above are from the National Literacy Trust’s 2026 Annual Literacy Survey.