A Little List of Christmas Literature

I like to change up my reading vibe according to the seasons. Spooky reads in fall, snowy reads in winter, etc. Christmas deserves its own category, and if you’re in the mood for some Christmas literature, I’ve got a few recs. for you. I’m skipping over Little Women and A Christmas Carol, because you already know about those. Here are some titles that might not already be on your radar—

Small Things Like These

You’ll find mostly short books on this list, and here’s the first of them. Set in the 1980s, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These gives the reader a glimpse inside Ireland’s cruel Magdalene laundries, and a glimpse inside the male protagonist who has to face what for others is “not our concern.” A beautiful book about hope and courage.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

From the introduction: “To capture the Victorian ghost story experience is to whisper it by candlelight, to feel the tendrils of December’s chill reaching from the darkness outside the hearth’s glow. While our culture associates the summer campfire with this type of take, the Victorians looked to Christmas fires instead…Read it at night.”

A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories

This is a wonderful collection of little-known short stories and poems taken from African American journals and newspapers between 1880 and 1953. What really made this book great to me was the historical information that Editor Bettye Collier-Thomas included in introductions to each piece.

Holidays on Ice

When David Sedaris first read an essay on NPR about the two Christmas seasons he spent working as a holiday elf at Macy’s (the opening essay in this book), the story garnered more encore requests than any segment in the station’s history. Stick this short work of Christmas literature in the stocking of your humor-loving loved one.

The Night Before Christmas

Do not pick up this book with expectations of encountering a red Santa suit and visions of sugar plums. This tiny book written by the father of Russian literature, Nikolai Gogol, is a fairy tale featuring a snowy village, a witch, and a suitor trying to win over the beautiful Oksana, with a little help from the devil.

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas

Someone’s got to work the E.R. at Christmastime, and one of those someones wrote a book about it. A Sunday Times humor book of the year, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas is written by British writer, comedian, and former doctor Adam Kay. I recommend you read the Sedaris book, cleanse your palate with a non-humor book, and then dive back into the Christmas literature genre with this witty little gem.

A Christmas Memory

If you’ve read any Truman Capote, it’s probably his novel In Cold Blood. But short stories were his great love, and gathered in this slim book are three of his favorites—“A Christmas Memory”, “The Thanksgiving Visitor”, and “One Christmas.”