Brandon Harville Last updated: January 21, 2023

Add Some Holiday Spice to the Classroom with These 4 ESL Christmas Stories

For some people, Christmas is their favorite season.

And when I was teaching English in South Korea, Christmas was my favorite time of the year to lesson plan.

It was a time when I was allowed to move away from the standardized curriculum and incorporate holiday-themed elements from my own country into my English lessons.

And you know what? My students loved learning about it. They appreciated the break from the usual textbook material as we talked about snowmen, reindeer, Santa (affectionately dubbed “Santa Grandfather” in Korean) and other Christmas themes.

It’s a time when teachers are encouraged to add more creativity and flexibility to our classroom lessons. We get to incorporate Christmas music and reminisce about our past holiday traditions with our students. We also have a chance to give them a creative, hands-on approach to learning that extends beyond textbooks and flashcards.

In fact, Christmas is one of the easiest times of the year to be an English teacher thanks to the fact that there’s no shortage of Christmas material out there that can be added to your lessons.

This post will focus on Christmas stories and why you should be taking advantage of them this holiday season.

Most students love learning English through Christmas stories because they’re a fun way to exchange and share cultural traditions.

With that being said, remember to be mindful of other cultures before teaching about Christmas, especially if you’re teaching in a Middle Eastern country. In any case, it’s always a good idea to ask permission before spending the day reading stories about Christmas.

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Ways to Make Your ESL Christmas Stories an Instant Hit

When done right, Christmas stories are like the Holy Grail of reading material. They tend to be fun, lighthearted and not overly complicated, which is why most students really enjoy them.

Provide context

You don’t want to make the mistake of reading a Christmas story without providing any context beforehand. There’s a good chance that your students celebrate Christmas slightly differently than you, if they celebrate it at all.

You’ll want to give them a little bit of background information, like what Christmas means to you and how you celebrate it with your friends and family. This is also a great time to have your students tell you what they do for the holidays, as well as go over different Christmas customs around the world.

Open with an icebreaker

Make sure to start your lesson with something fun that gets your students excited about the lesson. A lot of teachers like Christmas songs because they have catchy, upbeat lyrics and are easy to memorize. You can also open with a short Christmas-themed video as well.

If you’re looking for ideas, try this short video clip about Christmas in the United States. And if you really want to get your students talking about Christmas, follow it up with this clip about Christmas in the UK and discuss the differences.

Always include an activity

You’ll always want to have a fun activity to go alongside your Christmas story. Whether you want to have the activity before or after reading stores is your choice, but having it at the end of the lesson is a great way to reinforce important ideas you covered in the story.

Some standout activities to get your students thinking include:

Writing Christmas-themed poems

Writing a letter or wishlist to Santa

Making Christmas cards for friends, family or classmates

Creating a script for a Christmas-themed play and role-playing it in class

And now that we’ve covered some of the basics of how to turn those Santa books into ESL Christmas lessons, let’s take a look at some great stories to introduce to the class.

4 ESL Christmas Stories to Jazz Up the Holiday Season

“Christmas: ESL Story and Lesson Plan” by Shelley Ann Vernon

Also known as “An English Christmas for Young ESL Learners,” author Shelley Ann Vernon talks about Christmas from a British perspective. Here, children will learn about what it’s like to celebrate Christmas in England, while learning a little bit about the types of food, decorations and festivities common in the UK during the holiday season.

If you’re looking for a book that requires minimal prep time and is filled with brilliant classroom activities and creative ideas, this book is perfect for you. It’s one of the few Christmas books designed specifically with ESL students in mind, which is why you get a lot of bonus material. This book includes free printable online flashcards, lesson plans and various games created specifically for elementary-aged ESL students.

Another great thing about this book is that the story comes with two versions—one for beginners and one for intermediate speakers that includes a rhyming version of the story with more vocabulary words.

“When Christmas Feels Like Home” by Gretchen Griffith

This book is especially great for teachers who are teaching ESL in the United States because it talks about Christmas from the perspective of an immigrant.

It covers the story of Eduardo, a child from rural Mexico who’s learning how to adapt to a new culture and new Christmas traditions after he and his family moved to the U.S.

Despite being a book geared towards elementary students, “When Christmas Feels Like Home” is perfect for English language learners of all ages. This is due to the fact that it covers very real topics that people experience while living abroad that can be discussed in depth with older students.

“Oxford Bookworms Library: A Christmas Carol: Level 3: 1000-Word Vocabulary” by Charles Dickens and Jennifer Bassett

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens is a timeless classic that many of us have read at some point during our time in grade school. And while this story is a holiday staple in many countries, and easy to understand for us native English speakers, this book can be quite overwhelming to your average ESL student—until now.

Oxford Bookworms Library’s rendition of this famous English novel has been carefully rewritten with ESL students in mind. Now your intermediate teenage and adult students can grasp the content covered in this version of “A Christmas Carol” and get to know one of Britain’s most popular authors.

“Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas, Level 2, Pearson English Active Readers” by Skinner

Ever since its release two-and-a-half decades ago, “The Nightmare before Christmas” has had a fierce cult following due to its unorthodox approach towards Christmas and Halloween. Thanks to Pearson English Active Readers, your ESL students can also get the opportunity to appreciate one of Tim Burton’s most iconic works as they learn about Christmas in the Netherworld.

Great for intermediate students of all ages, “The Nightmare before Christmas” is the perfect book to read if you’re looking to teach something a little different than your usual Christmas story. And since the story has a Halloween theme to it as well, you can introduce it to your students at the beginning of fall and cover two major holidays at the same time.

Now that we’ve looked at how you can add some flair to your holiday lessons, go out and make your next ESL Christmas lesson a holly jolly lesson!