What to put in a Christmas Eve box, when its only job is getting them to sleep

A Christmas Eve box is a wind-down with a lid on it. It gives an evening that would otherwise be spent asking how many hours are left a shape and an ending: open the box, bath, pyjamas, story, bed. The contents are the steps.

So the test for anything you are thinking of putting in is simple. Does it make bedtime easier, or harder? Pyjamas, easier. A warm drink, easier. A book, much easier. A bag of sweets at six o'clock, a toy that needs batteries, anything that makes a noise or needs assembling - harder, every time, and on the one night you can least afford it.

None of that means the box has to be dull. It means the exciting part is the opening, and everything inside it should be pulling in the direction of sleep.

New pyjamas, nearly always, and they do real work: putting on new pyjamas is a clear, physical signal that the day is over, and a child who has just been handed them wants to put them on now.

A book to read in bed. More on this below, because it is the centre of the whole thing.

Something warm to drink - a hot chocolate sachet and a mug is the classic. Make it an early one, well before teeth.

Something quiet for the evening: a Christmas film to watch together before the bath, a colouring book, a simple card game.

And something to leave out - a carrot for the reindeer, something for Father Christmas - which gives the last job of the evening a purpose that ends at the front door rather than at the window.

Everything else in the box happens downstairs. The book is the one thing that happens in bed, with the lights down, and that makes it the part of the ritual that actually delivers the child to sleep. Choose it for that job.

Short enough to finish without a negotiation. Calm rather than thrilling - a story that winds down rather than one that builds. And ideally set on the same night, so that the evening they are living and the story they are hearing are the same evening, which is exactly the feeling you are trying to produce.

Our own Christmas Eve story is built on that idea - the same night, slowed down to the hours before bed, with the child in it - but any calm Christmas Eve picture book does the job, and one you already own does it for nothing. If you do want a personalised one in the box, it has to be ordered weeks ahead rather than days, because it is printed after you approve it.

The real ordering deadline for a personalised Christmas book is earlier than most people assume, and the guide to Christmas books explains why the clock starts when you approve it. Take a look

A Christmas Eve book is the one book a family gives on the same date every year, which makes it the easiest tradition there is to turn into something the child keeps for good. Write in it. The year, their age, one thing that happened that December.

Do it every year and by the time they are twelve there is a shelf of Christmas Eve books, each dated, each with a line about the year it came from - which is, quietly, a better record of their childhood than the photographs, because it says what mattered rather than what it looked like.

Keep the wording the same each year and change only the sentence about the year. A run of them read in order is the thing people take with them when they leave home.

If you are stuck for the line itself, there are thirty ready-made dedications sorted by occasion, and the same three rules make any of them worth keeping. Take a look

Under three: pyjamas, a sturdy board book and something for the bath. Skip the film - at this age the evening is short and the ritual is the point, not the entertainment.

Four to seven: the full version. This is the age the box was invented for - old enough to be wildly excited, young enough to be settled by a routine - and the reindeer food and the note for Father Christmas carry real weight.

Eight and over: a later bedtime, a film, a game you can play together, and a book they can read to themselves once you have said goodnight. Older children often enjoy running the box for a younger brother or sister, which turns the evening into something they are in charge of rather than something done to them.

Sugar after tea. Anything with batteries. Anything that needs assembling, instructions or an adult with a screwdriver. Slime, anything with glitter, and anything that will be found in the carpet in March.

And the actual presents. A Christmas Eve box that contains a real toy moves the excitement forward by twelve hours and wakes it up at the exact moment you are trying to put it to bed.

After tea and before the bath - not at bedtime. The box should start the wind-down, not arrive at the end of it, so that there is time to open it, watch the film, drink the hot chocolate and still have a bath without anyone being rushed.

If Christmas Eve is spent travelling or at somebody else's house, the box travels well and is arguably more useful there: the same ritual in a strange bedroom is a fixed point on a night when everything else is unfamiliar.

The branded wooden boxes are lovely and entirely optional. A shoebox, a pillowcase or a gift bag does the same job, and most of what goes inside - pyjamas, a book, a hot chocolate - is something you were going to buy in December anyway.

With more than one child, a box each avoids the argument and lets each one hold a book chosen for them. If you share one, share the film and the drink and keep the books separate: the book is the part that is personal, and the part that goes to bed with them.

Our Christmas Eve story is set on exactly that evening, slowed down to the hours before bed, with your child as the one who cannot sleep. Take a look