Why isn’t that reindeer flying?

Why there is a great value in maintaining the traditional Christmas stories with children from all cultural backgrounds.

Christmas stories demand a certain suspension of disbelief, and as such the theme of Christmas makes a perfect starting point for storytelling.

And yet occasionally some children do get concerned with how Father Christmas might visit them when they live in an apartment with central heating and no chimney.

For this reason when Snail Tales brings Christmas stories to schools we work from the premise that it is important for the traditional tales of this time of year to retain their form and style, while at the same time engaging with other cultures and indeed modern day life.

That doesn’t mean we actually talk about chimneys and central heating, but rather that we take as our starting point the notion that the Christmas spirit is not just snow (which of course we rarely see at Christmas in much of the UK), robins, and Dickensian images of boxes wrapped in paper.

Our aim is to make it plain that Christmas is also about generosity – and indeed generosity in spite of it all.  It is about camels in the Arabian deserts as well as grumpy widows in the winds of Siberia.

This, we feel, is the real theme of Christmas as it is celebrated all around the world, not just in storytelling but also in puppetry and ballad.

Thus Snail Tales offers stories that will expand the cultural awareness of the children you teach and develop their literacy skills, while giving them a sense of fun in a way they may not come across through any other source.

We offer Christmas storytelling as a full-day and a half-day programme which can include an assembly suitable for the whole school and/or stories for individual classes.  We also offer an optional free after-school staff training session with every whole day booking.

There is more information on www.snailtales.org/christmas. You can also ask us to pencil you into our diary by completing our online booking form.

Or, if you have an immediate question, please do either: