Annual Book Club Christmas Party & Book Exchange

Each year, my book club celebrates Christmas with a special holiday dinner and party. It’s our favorite gathering of the year.

For this year’s party, 22 attended! Here are the details of the evening.

I set up tables in my dining room in a U shape. I covered the tables in brown paper and used Hester and Cook placemats for a festive holiday look.

At each spot, I had a book as a small gift for the guests. I bought used books at my local used book store and wrapped each book in velvet ribbon. This was an affordable way to give a little something to everyone, which I loved doing!

Book Club Dinner Menu

For drinks, many people brought wine, and I made my favorite holiday punch. To make this holiday punch, combine one jug of cran-raspberry juice, one 2 liter bottle of Sprite, one can of frozen orange juice and one can of frozen limeade. Stir togther and add in fresh cranberries. It’s simple and delicious. Some guests mixed it with their wine!

For the dinner, I decided on soup, salad and bread. This was perfect to make for a large group because it was affordable, fed a lot, was easy to make (all were crock pot/instant pot recipes) and the leftovers freezable. I made three kinds of soup because I wanted to have variety for my guests and because then I would have a variety of leftovers:

Potato Soup: I have been making this recipe for years. It is wonderful! I served it with bacon and cheddar cheese. Tip, make it the day of. I made it overnight (for the first time ever) and then left it on warm all day. Unfortunately, having it on warm in the crockpot made the soup darken a bit. It didn’t impact the taste, but it wasn’t as pretty as it is when it is made same day.

Lasagna Soup: I modified this recipe to have cheese tortellini instead of lasagna noodles + cheese. It just made it easier for a crowd, especially since I was serving several soups.

Chicken Soup: I made pasta noodles for people to add to the soup if they wanted. I had these in a separate pot, so people could add or eat the soup as just chicken vegetable. I also never put noodles directly in soup because if you have leftovers, the absorb too much of the liquid.

I made a big Italian salad to be served with the soup (I used six heads of romaine lettuce and four would have been enough). I also bought yummy bread to bake from the grocery store.

For dessert I made this Dark Chocolate Peppermint Cake. I made two cakes and it was WONDERFUL. It also was a very easy recipe to make. Note: The frosting portion of the recipe makes plenty of frosting, so you don’t have to be light with it as you frost.

Book Club Discussion

During dinner, we discussed our December book pick, Tom Lake. I think it was well liked by everyone in the group. Overwhelmingly, people listened to the audio book because Meryl Streep read it.

Personally, Tom Lake was my favorite fiction book of 2023. I absolutely loved it. (It’s currently only $13 on Amazon when you clip the coupon.)

We meet bimonthly, so our next gathering will be in February. We are reading Fourth Wing for February. In April we are reading Shark Heart. (We always know the next two books we are reading.)

To see all the books we have read, check out this Good Reads list by my friend Katie.

Book Exchange

After our discussion, we partook in our favorite party tradition — our favorite book exchange. I didn’t take any photos, but you can see the wrapped book in this picture. The books are wrapped, along with a tag giving a description of the book. We trade names and then everyone reads the tags and opens their books. After all the books are opened, we rolled dice and if you got doubles you could trade books with someone. It is so fun and everyone gets a great book to enjoy over the holidays.

Read more about how to do the book exchange in last year’s party post here.