"Christmas won't be Christmas without some
seasonal literature ... "
Christmas is just days away, and things are really starting to hot up around here, festive-wise. We're having our arts desk Christmas lunch today, I've just been to a meeting about holiday rotas, and at least four publishers have sent us Christmas cards. Truly, we are walking in a winter wonderland.
The other sure-fire indicator that holidays, in the timeless words of Coca-Cola, are coming, is the pile of novelty Christmas books currently cluttering up my desk. Sample titles include Can Reindeer Fly? The Science of Christmas, and The Book Of Christmas (an anthology of Christmas writing, gushingly billed as "by turns celebratory and joyous, nostalgic and poignant"). My personal favourite is The Xmas Files (see what they did there?), a book on the philosophy of Christmas. Who wouldn't want to read a book with a blurb that begins "Picture the scene: Aunt Gertrude has just given you the most appalling Christmas tie, complete with snow-flecked kittens in bowler hats. Do you smile, nod, and confine it to the bottom drawer? Or do you tell the truth and spare yourself future ties from hell? Kant would say that we must, at all costs, tell the truth - whilst Mill would insist that we should think of the consequences ... "
Gripping as these books undeniably sound, however, for me the words 'Christmas books' mean something quite different. My favourite Christmas book up to the age of about 14, for example (ok - you got me. It's still my favourite Christmas book), was Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, the second volume in her peerless Arthurian fantasy series of the same name. It manages to take all the elements of a quintessential English Christmas - drifting snow, yule logs, decorations, carolling - and combine them with adventure and brooding menace: the perfect mix for a winter's night. I reread it annually throughout my teenage years to put myself in a seasonal mood. Other favourites included Nina Beachcroft's Cold Christmas - a ghost story set in a rambling, atmospheric country house, now sadly out of print - and Dylan Thomas's unutterably wonderful A Child's Christmas in Wales (if you haven't read it, please do so immediately - it's available in full here).
So tell me - am I alone in my seasonal reading habits, or does everyone have a Christmas-y book that they turn to at this time of year? And if you do have one - what is it?
