Well. I’m a little late to this but since every day’s a holiday, I don’t feel so bad. And since a lot of my neighbors still have their Christmas decorations up, even less so. Here, then, are the ten best books or stories that reflect the spirit of the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s/Electoral season and, no, this doesn’t include The Gift of the Magi. Just remember, my concept of seasonal spirit may differ from yours:
10. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. A short story in which Thomas, the evocative master of mood and scene, reminisces through the eyes of a fictional young boy about his happy days of sledding and snow and the magic of the Christmas season. It’ll make you want to break out your wassails and plum pudding, such a good boy you are. This is what memory does, the past in gold and light and simple joys, which Thomas, apparently, missed terribly.
9. Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Match Girl. Another short story that you may mistake for a fairy tale except there is no magic here, no fairy godmother, nothing works out at the end. It’s quite a tragic tale and you probably shouldn’t read it to your children, all snug and warm in their beds. Unless you wish to teach them that not all children are snug and warm.
8. The Children of Men, PD James. What is such a bleak, disheartening and brutal story doing on a holiday list? Well, to make you count your blessings. Published in 1992, the England of 2021 is dissolving into chaos and tribalism because of mass infertility. Hmm, 2021, people aren’t having kids … sounds a bit prescient.
7. The Forgotten Door, Alexander Key. I have listed this book in several other locations because it remains one of my favorites and is an excellent holiday read about a wondrous world just inside a certain door. And, no, it’s not Narnia.
6. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury. A paste-up, pastiche, pick your word, of several Bradbury stories set on Mars. It’s actually a narrative of empire lost and empire found and what seems like loss really isn’t.
5. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. What’s more Christmasy than a 14th Century monastery and Latin puzzles and labyrinths and te deum’s and brilliant detective work involving Aristotle and Roger Bacon? And what’s more Halloween than a Satanic cult? A book to cover the entire holiday period.
4. Was, Geoff Ryman. Quite the heartbreaking tale about the real Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and her chance encounter with L. Frank Baum that inspires his novel, and, forty years later, a man dying of AIDS who is searching for her. This is not a happy story, but it is a lyric.
3. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens. Of course Dickens has to appear on here somewhere because the man practically invented Christmas, but this isn’t so much that as it’s a story of change and revenge and hopes, and the unexpected ways life can move. The orphaned Pip encounters an escaped prisoner in a graveyard, and his life is forever altered.
2. Anything by Saki. The pen name for HH Munro, who wrote some of the best ironic tales of surprising twists in English. You cannot go wrong with a random pick of 10 or 20. Don’t worry, they’re very short. One of my favorites is the story Gabriel-Ernest. A young man may not be the hero everyone thinks.
1. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. Do I need to justify this? It’s the prototype, the classic, and still the best story of redemption and what Christmas means. Or what it should mean.
There you go. Now you can recapture that inner child who once believed magic existed and anything was possible. Maybe you still do.
BTW, if you’re looking for something a little different to enjoy over the next year or so, take a look at the Youtube series, Losing Cable. My cousin, Jason Smith of Northwind productions, has re-edited it and well, just pull up Episode 1 and enjoy this story of losers and smokers and obsession with a cheesy scifi TV show. And, if you make it until the last episode, you just may see someone you recognize. Sort of.