Christmas Coloring Pages

December sheets have a second job: keeping children occupied during the long stretches of the holiday when nothing is happening yet. So these 35 free printable Christmas coloring pages run deep rather than wide, with pages that take an hour as well as pages that take five minutes.

What is in the Christmas set

• Christmas tree coloring pages: three of them, each bauble outlined separately, garlands drawn as bead chains, presents stacked underneath.
• Santa Claus, with a sack of toys and with a toy train, surrounded by holly and snowflakes.
• Reindeer and sleighs: two reindeer pulling presents, three in harness, one decorating a tree with squirrels.
• Snowmen: with a top hat and a bird on the arm, with a broom, with a carrot nose beside a snow castle.
• Gingerbread houses, four of them, with candy-striped pillars, wavy roofs and peppermints in the sky, plus a gingerbread man in a bow tie.
• Fireplaces and stockings, candles burning on the mantel and a wreath above.
• Wreaths, with holly, pine cones, berries and ribbons.
• Penguins: one in a Santa hat holding a gift, two exchanging presents beside an igloo.
• Carol singers in a snowy street, once in Victorian coats under a lantern.
• A boy ice skating, scarf flying.
• Single objects for the quick pages: a bell with a bow, two lit candles, a pile of wrapped presents, a sheet of mittens and candy canes.
• A nativity scene, with Mary, Joseph and the manger under a star.

What is not in this set

There are no elves and no angels here. The elves are in the Santa drawer with the reindeer and the workshop, which is where people look for them, and the nativity is a single sheet rather than a set.

Saying so saves you the search. A category page that promises everything and delivers a tree is worse than one that names its limits.

Trees that look decorated rather than spotted

A tree here is drawn with individually outlined baubles, each carrying its own stripe or wave pattern inside. Each one can take a different color, and the page ends up looking like a decorated tree rather than a green triangle with measles. Garlands are drawn bead by bead for the same reason, and the presents underneath have separate paper, ribbon and bow.

Christmas coloring pages as cards

Fold an A4 sheet in half twice for a card that fits a standard envelope, or print at A5 and mount the colored page onto folded card stock. The single-object sheets (the bell, the candles, the wreath) are the ones that work at that size; a full tree loses its detail when it is quartered.

The long pages and the quick ones

The big tree with the presents, the gingerbread house with candy pillars and the carol-singing street each have enough separate areas to absorb an hour. At the other end, the bell, the mittens sheet and the gingerbread man are done in five minutes, which is what you want at the tail end of a long afternoon.

If the snow is the appealing part rather than the holiday, the winter drawings in the nature drawer carry on into January, and the fall set covers the season before.

All free, 300 dpi, A4 and US Letter, no account and no watermark.