What if I told you there is an Icelandic Christmas tradition that means you would get to spend an entire day or an entire evening

reading books and sipping hot cocoa and that's what you're supposed to be doing.

Who friends?

Do I have a treat for you?

This is the Read-A-Loud Revival, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling.

I'm Sarah McKenzie and in this episode we're talking about how to Yala Boka Flood.

You do not want to miss this.

Okay, first things first, how on earth do we actually pronounce this word?

So there are a lot of very opinionated people online adamant that the word is pronounced one way or another, but Yala Boka Flood seems to be the consensus.

So I'm going to use that here.

If you happen to speak Icelandic fluently, would you write in and tell me if I'm pronouncing it correctly or not?

Because I would love that.

For here and now on this episode I'm going to say Yala Boka Flood.

What is it?

And why on earth are we talking about it here on the Read-A-Loud Revival?

Yala Boka Flood can be translated into Yule Book Flood or Christmas Book Flood.

This is an Icelandic Christmas tradition where you gift members of your family with new books and then you drink hot cocoa and spend the whole of Christmas Eve reading those books.

So basically it's a Christmas evening set aside for reading and chocolate.

If I didn't get your attention before, I've got it now.

In Iceland this tradition originated during World War II when foreign merchandise was restricted and paper was just about the only thing that wasn't rationed in Iceland.

So then publishing houses flooded the market with new books during the last few weeks of the year.

It was a Yule Book Flood or a Christmas Book Flood, right?

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