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Twelve Posts of Christmas (and New Year): One – Favourite Christmasses in Books!

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Hello and welcome to the first in a series of posts I will be doing to get myself (and hopefully you) in the festive mood. I love Christmas. I’m not religious, but I love the season. I live in the northern hemisphere, so Christmas is a bright glittery spot in the middle of gloomy wet winter, and I try to make the most of it.

NaNoFiMo is over, and I’ve finished the first draft of my novel  (more on that in another post), so I’m going to take a little break and read lots of books, to remind myself what good novels feel like to read and help me get in the mood for editing. I’m tempted to make some of those books Christmassy, as tis the season, after all! I’ve ordered Let It Snow for the Bookish Brits December Book Club, and since reading and loving Cold Comfort Farm, I’ve really wanted to read the short story ‘Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm‘, a prequel, too.

So I started to think about my favourite Christmasses in books, and quickly decided that would be the topic of my First Post of Christmas.

When I was a kid I read Little Women several times, and the story begins just before Christmas. I loved reading about how the March girls and Marmee spread Christmas cheer, though they are a bit sickeningly sweet and self-sacrificing. I much preferred reading What Katy Did at School. Katy and her sister Clover are at boarding school and decide not to go home for Christmas at the journey takes three days each way. Instead they receive ‘Christmas boxes’ from their families, full of presents and flowers and delicious-sounding cakes. I used to read this scene over and over again and attempt to recreate it by finding things I owned that were similar to Katy and Clover’s presents, wrapping them up, putting them in a box, and then opening it all again! It’s my favourite part of the entire novel and must be at least partly responsible for my love of recieving parcels in the post!

A more recent read was Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray, which is set in the Victorian era and of course it was the Victorians who lay the foundations of Christmas as we know it – inventing greetings cards and enjoying seasonal parties. I loved the historical detail in this book – the balls and other events, as well as the Christmas shopping! I also loved the Christmas scenes in Adorkable – when Jeane went to stay with the Lee family I almost exploded from the cute overload.

What about you? What are your favourite Christmasses in books? If you don’t celebrate Christmas, how are the festivals you enjoy portrayed in books? Any recommendations? I’d love to know.

Book Review: Missing the Midnight, by Jane Gardam

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From The British Library

Missing the Midnight is a small collection of short stories by English writer Jane Gardam. I have the hardback edition, which has a few more pages than the paperback because of the formatting. It’s physically smaller than most books, it’s a format which suits the writing, and it would make a cute gift. There are twelve stories in this book, grouped under three themes:

1. Five Carols

These are short stories set at Christmas. The first, ‘Missing the Midnight’ is from the point of view of a girl who has just dropped out of university coming home on Christmas Eve. ‘The Zoo At Christmas’ follows a group of animals as they leave the zoo to go to midnight mass. The others are ‘Old Filth’, about a retired lawyer at home alone on Christmas after his wife has passed away – this character was later the focus of a novel of the same name, ‘Miss Misteltoe’, about a woman considered a parasite by the people who always have her to dinner at Christmas, and finally ‘Christmas Island’, a strange story about creatures born to humans who devour the world.

2. Five Grotesques

These are quirky, fairytale-like stories and I enjoyed this section the most. ‘Grace’ is about a man with a diamond in the back of his neck and ‘Light’ is set in the Himalayas and tells the story of a girl with no eyes in the front of her head but one in her throat. ‘The Girl With The Golden Ears’ follows the attempts of fashion editor Eglantine Fosche-Grille to get rid of the golden hair that has started to grow from her ears, whilst ‘The Boy Who Turned Into A Bike’ is about a bike fanatic called Clancy and Nancy, the woman he loves. This section concludes with ‘The Pillow Goose’, about two women who find themselves with a flock of geese prized for their feathers.

3. Two Hauntings

‘Soul Mates’ is a creepy story about a couple who meet another pair just like themselves on a retirement holiday, and ‘The Green Man’ is a short novella about the mythical figure. I didn’t really ‘get’ either of these stories, the first was short enough for it not to matter but ‘The Green Man’ seemed to drag.

Some of these stories are quite strongly religious, and I did not enjoy that element of the collection because I am not religious myself. However, Gardam’s characterisation is excellent and I enjoyed the stories because the characters were all so interesting even if I didn’t like the morals some of them express. The stories I enjoyed the most are ‘Miss Misteltoe’, because it has a clever twist, ‘Grace’, ‘Light’ and ‘The Boy Who Turned Into A Bike’. The middle section ‘Five Grotesques’ was definitely my favourite.

I think this book is best read at Christmas even if you are not a Christian – it can feel strange to read Christmas stories at any other time. It would make a nice Christmas gift for someone who likes books but you don’t know very well – there should be something in here that most people will enjoy.

I probably won’t read this again but it was a interesting and quick seasonal read.