Bookish Christmas Is Here: Our Cozy Holiday Coloring Book for Readers

Hi Bookish Besties, Somehow, we have made it to book four. I still have moments where I look at the Thyme Lane coloring books sitting together and think, Wait, we actually made all of these adult coloring books? What started as one creative experiment with Cozy Reading has turned into this little bookish coloring world, and now we get to add Christmas to it. Bookish Christmas: Cute and Cozy Christmas Coloring Book for Book Lovers is officially here, with 50 bold and easy, hand-drawn designs created for readers who want the coziest possible version of the holidays. And when I say cozy, I mean my version of Christmas. Books under the tree, cocoa nearby, and pajamas before it is socially acceptable to admit you’re done for the evening. Plus twinkling lights, a reading chair you have absolutely no intention of leaving, and gifts that suspiciously resemble books. Basically, if your ideal December involves fewer frantic errands and more sitting somewhere warm with something good to read, this one was made for you. What I especially love about this book is that it feels festive without feeling busy. Christmas itself can become very loud very quickly, so I wanted this coloring book to offer the opposite: a simple, analog little pocket of the season where you can sit down, choose some colors, and enjoy yourself for a while. No productivity required.

How We Got From Cozy Reading to Bookish Christmas

When I first teamed up with our wonderfully talented illustrator (who is also a reader and a teacher) I knew I wanted Thyme Lane to be about simple creative things that help us slow down a little. We started with Cozy Reading, which was built around all those small details that make reading feel comforting. Then came Bookish Quotes, where we got to play with the sayings, moods, and little truths readers immediately understand. After that came Bookish Halloween, which let us go fully into pumpkins, friendly ghosts, witches, black cats, and the cozy side of spooky season. And now we have Bookish Christmas. I think this one feels especially sweet because Christmas already comes with so much nostalgia attached to it. We all have these tiny details that make the season feel like the season: a certain mug, the lights going on in the evening, wrapping gifts while watching the same movie we’ve watched for years, the first night it feels cold enough to justify three blankets. For me, books fit naturally into all of that. I didn’t want to create a generic Christmas coloring book and simply add a bookshelf in the background every few pages. I wanted the reading life to feel woven into the entire thing.

Meet Bookish Christmas, Our Fourth Thyme Lane Coloring Book

Bookish Christmas includes 50 large-print, hand-drawn illustrations where books and Christmas meet on every page. You’ll find steaming drinks, sweet treats, book-shaped gifts, wrapped book stacks, holiday sweaters, slippers, wreaths, snow globes, Christmas decorations, and warm reading spaces that look exactly like where I would like to spend most of December. And yes, we kept one of my favorite Thyme Lane rules: every page has a book. Because if we’re calling it Bookish Christmas, I want you to be able to open it anywhere and immediately know who this book was made for.

Why Bold and Easy Still Matters to Me

The entire Thyme Lane series uses the same bold and easy coloring style, with thick, clean lines and larger open spaces. That choice is intentional. I love detailed artwork, but when I reach for a coloring book because I want to unwind, I don’t necessarily want to discover that I’ve accidentally assigned myself a three-hour precision project involving forty-seven microscopic leaves. Sometimes I just want to color. That is why the designs are approachable whether you’ve been coloring for years or haven’t picked up a marker since you were a kid. There is room to experiment without feeling like you need special skills or expensive supplies. Use markers, colored pencils, pens, crayons if that is what you have. Color while listening to an audiobook, watching a Christmas movie, or having the same holiday playlist on for the hundredth time. The book is supposed to fit into your life, not become another thing you have to perform correctly.

The single-sided pages help with that too. Every illustration has a blank back, so you don’t have another design immediately behind it. If you’re using alcohol markers or another wetter medium, I still recommend sliding a blank sheet behind the page you’re coloring for extra protection. Each book is also printed in an 8.5-by-8.5-inch square format, which gives the designs enough room to breathe without creating an enormous coloring book you have to wrestle with on the couch.

Bookish Christmas Is Also a Gift I Would Actually Give a Reader

I always hesitate a little when something is described as “the perfect gift,” because we all know gift-giving depends very heavily on the human being receiving it. But I do think Bookish Christmas fills a very specific little gift niche nicely.

• It’s for the reader who already owns a lot of books.
• It’s for the person who likes cozy hobbies.
• It’s for somebody who wants something screen-free to do in the evening.
• It’s for adults who loved coloring as kids and would happily start again if someone gave them permission.
• It’s also easy to pair with a small set of markers or pencils and turn into a simple bookish Christmas gift or stocking stuffer.
• Because the artwork is bold and easy rather than highly intricate, it can work for adults, teens, and seniors without requiring someone to identify as “a serious colorist” before they can enjoy it.

I like things that people can just use. No learning curve, or elaborate setup is required. So you can sit it down, pick a page, choose a color, and that is enough.

Why This Fourth Book Feels Different to Me

Every Thyme Lane book has felt different to create. The first one felt like an experiment. The second made me realize we had more ideas than I initially understood. Bookish Halloween showed me how much fun it could be to take the reading life and build an entire seasonal world around it. But Bookish Christmas feels a little like seeing the whole idea come together. So we now have four books sitting beside one another: Cozy Reading, Bookish Quotes, Bookish Halloween, and Bookish Christmas. That’s still wild to me.

I spend so much of my work talking about books, reviewing books, recommending books, and thinking about what readers might want to pick up next. Thyme Lane has given me this completely different way to play in the same world. We’re still creating for readers. We’re just giving your hands something to do while your audiobook plays. And I think that’s why this little creative side of my work has become so meaningful to me. It isn’t trying to replace reading. It sits beside it. For example a coloring book and an audiobook. A quiet hour and a cup of something warm. A Christmas movie you’ve already seen fifteen times and a handful of markers. It’s very low stakes, very cozy, and exactly my speed.

Where to Find Bookish Christmas

Bookish Christmas: Cute and Cozy Christmas Coloring Book for Book Lovers with 50 Bold and Easy Large Print Designs is available in paperback from Thyme Lane. You can find Bookish Christmas on Amazon here.

It’s Book 4 in the Bookish Life Bold & Easy Coloring series, following Cozy Reading, Bookish Quotes, and Bookish Halloween, so you can start with whichever theme feels most like you or build your own little Thyme Lane collection. You can also visit Thyme Lane to follow along with what we’re creating.

Final Thoughts

I think Christmas can become very focused on doing. Buy this. Wrap that. Go there. Remember this. Make the thing. Attend the other thing. Somehow know where the tape is at all times. So maybe that is why I especially like having something as simple as Bookish Christmas in the middle of it. You sit down, pick a page, and color for a while; nothing needs to come from it. You don’t need to finish the picture tonight. You don’t have to be good at it. Nobody needs to see it. You don’t need to turn it into content or productivity or another holiday accomplishment. It can just be a quiet little part of Christmas that belongs to you.

Now I want to know: which page would you color first, Christmas treats, bookish gifts, cozy sweaters, festive decorations, or a fireside reading nook?