18 Literary Works to Read This Christmas

Or: Yes, Virginia, Moby-Dick is a Christmas Novel

People love to talk about Christmas movies, but what of the Christmas literature? We can debate whether or not Die Hard and Gremlins and Eyes Wide Shut are Christmas films, but I seem to never hear the same debate about Moby-Dick or Hamlet or Little House on the Prairie, despite all featuring Christmas scenes or moments. Every adaptation of Little Women seems to be recognized as a Christmas movie, but rarely do you hear about the original novel itself being a Christmas book. If I google “is little women”, I get the auto-suggested question of whether it’s a Christmas movie but nothing about whether it’s a Christmas book.

Even the little-watched screen adaptation of The Corrections rarely appears in the conversation of “is it a Christmas movie or not?”, despite the novel The Corrections unquestionably being a tale of Christmas. The book itself does not appear on “best Christmas reads”, despite the central conceit of the plot being a Midwestern mother attempting to organize “one last Christmas.”

Perhaps part of the issue is that it’s harder to consume a book within a season—although, with the Christmas season lasting around 6 weeks every year (at least within the United States), it seems that Christmas literature should be an easier concept. And so, here are a variety of things you can read this Christmas—whether you’re looking for a poem that can be read aloud, a story to read a page-at-a-time, or a novel to last you all twelve days of Christmas.

The Christmas Chapters in Little Women

I already mentioned it above, so let us begin here. Little Women opens and closes with Christmas. Alcott herself was inspired by Dickens, and it seems that she didn’t just depict Christmas; like Dickens, she helped invent it.

Autosuggest searches have no mention of the novel, alas.

As described in this post in The Tea and Ink Society,

In Alcott’s stories, Christmas cheer is fueled by gathering with family and friends for simple rituals like eating, decorating, and singing together; and spreading the cheer of your own hearth with those less fortunate.

Sure, the film adaptations are Christmas movies—and what more proof could you need that the novel itself is a Christmas book?

The Christmas Chapter in Moby-Dick

I am increasingly convinced the best way to consume Moby-Dick is in quick sittings, here and there. The book does not need to be read chronologically, especially not after you’ve made one first trudge from the front cover to the back. Pick it up and read a funny chapter about imagined whale facts. Any chapter.

The Christmas scene is the entirety of the 22nd chapter, a chapter in which the Pequod finally begins its journey and Ahab is yet to appear. Here is the description we get of this Christmas:

It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.

Read the whole chapter here. It’s a short one, and relatively comprehensible. Then read the whole novel, or just the greatest hits (i.e. Chapter 82: Jonah Historically Regarded or Chapter 89: Fast Fish and Loose Fish.)

“Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor” by John Cheever

Speaking of books you slowly read from cover to cover: I have been diligently making my way through The Short Stories of John Cheever for the last year or two. It moves between my bedside table and the bookshelf. One day I’ll finish it.

“Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor” is what it sounds like. The first line is “Christmas is a sad season” and the protagonist is an elevator man working at six in the morning on Christmas day. I will not tell you what happens from there, but like a lot of Cheever stories—and a lot of Christmas tales—it contains a balance of sadness and hope.

“Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald’s first foray into Christmas tales was the silly juvenilia “A Luckless Santa Claus.” Meanwhile, his best-known winter story is surely “The Ice Palace”, the tale of a Southern woman visiting a Middle West winter. However, as every Minnesotan knows, “The Ice Palace” can’t be a tale of Christmas, as the ice castles and palaces of Minnesota appear during January, during the Winter Carnival. They always arrive after Christmas, once the winter is even colder.

That leaves us with “Pat Hobby’s Christmas Wish” as Fitzgerald’s pre-eminent Christmas story, written during Fitzgerald’s descent into death and late-career obscurity. Is it one of his best stories? Nah. But it’s a Christmas story you can read to break the routine this year! Here it is, in Esquire.

“The Match” by Colson Whitehead (from The Nickel Boys)

Is it a reach to call this Christmas literature? Of course it is. Christmas is only mentioned once. But this is a tale of hope amidst violence, humanity in the absence of the humane. Both a standalone short story and the ninth chapter of Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel, this story tells us of a nightmarish boys “school” where the children are tortured, abused, and every year a boy from the Black half of the school fights a boy from the white half during a December boxing match. Like so many other examples on the list, it tells a story of hope in a place where hope is snuffed out.

The tenth chapter of The Nickel Boys tells us more about the school’s tragic Christmas rituals—and it’s worth reading the entire novel—but you can start with “The Match” (published in The New Yorker) to give yourself a taste of the book and of Whitehead, who I increasingly believe is one of the greatest living writers.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I have a tendency to think of Franzen as someone who has been cancelled. He hasn’t, not yet at least, but an aura of impending cancellation hangs around him. I’ve also written about him on this blog before, in “Does Jonathan Franzen Know What SEO Is?”

I’m surprised The Corrections isn’t mentioned more when people discuss Christmas entertainment. I still haven’t seen the screen adaptation of it, and not sure I ever will, but suffice it to say that this novel is required Christmas reading for those of you who are Christmas intolerant and Franzen tolerant.

“Christmas, or the Good Fairy” by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ah, let’s get back to the inspiring, or at least the relatively positive. I discovered this through a book I have called A Christmas Treasury of Yuletide Stories and Poems, which collects some of the public domain’s finest Christmas tributes. It’s a ten-page story, long enough to be of substance and short enough to make for a holiday read aloud. Read it here.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

I got the idea of including this through this programming, which also included the aforementioned Harriet Beecher Stowe story. While the sitting president might not be sure who Frederick Douglass is, you can read a few pages from Douglass’s autobiography to learn about Christmas through a slave’s experience in 1833. Read it here.

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

Now for something more lighthearted. I loved Beatrix Potter as a child. I still do. Pull this one out if you want something cheerful, fun, and family-friendly.

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem by Maya Angelou

It baffles me to think that Maya Angelou wrote a Christmas poem for the George W. Bush White House at the height of the Iraq War. Did this really happen? Yes, this happened. With the U.S. Navy band playing in the background.

Consider this verse:

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

Here’s a video of it:

It is hard to reconcile this with the ongoing war of that time, the still unended war, with the world we live in now. And yes, as confusing as it is to try to understand what exactly was happening in 2005 and how it led to where we are today, this is a good poem and one to read on Christmas.

“Chicago Christmas, 1984” by George Saunders

This New Yorker essay includes “a famous Fezziwiggian presence,” a Christmas party, poetry, roofing, and gambling. It’s not a happy story, but it’s a good one.

The Christmas Chapter in Little House on the Prairie

Eh, I got the idea to include this because it’s in that same Christmas treasury I read before and because I feel an obligation, as a Minnesotan who has visited Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous prairie house more than once, to include it. It’s an easy pick, if not exactly one I’m itching to read this year or any other year.

“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry

Gotta include this one, right? You do. You have to read it if you’ve never read it, and you have to read it again, and you have to read it to remind yourself what Christmas is and you have to read it out loud, with family, to remind all of you what Christmas is about.

The Part in Hamlet About Christmas

This one is short. Here’s the whole thing:

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

So there you have it. Hamlet is a Christmas movie.

“Support Christmas Boycott” by James Baldwin et al

You can read the pamphlet James Baldwin and others put together in 1963, for the purpose of boycotting Christmas by “putting Christ back into Christmas.” That “this Christmas shall come from our hearts and minds, not from our pocketbooks.” Because Santa mourns for the children killed in Birmingham.

The Dead by James Joyce

This is on my list for the year. Because I’ve never read it. But this article in The Economist convinced me to.

“The Burglar’s Christmas” by Willa Cather

Or: “The Prodigal Son Meets The Christmas Spirit.”

I hadn’t read Cather until a year or two ago, when I finally read Death Comes to the Archbishop. I still haven’t read My Antonia. I will read that in 2021.

This story is short, accessible, and, again, there’s hope—plus a story that might remind you of Les Mis.

“The Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot

I have to end the list with this. Not only my favorite Christmas poem, not only my favorite Christmas literature, but perhaps my favorite poem I’ve ever read. We have a tradition of reading this one out loud on Christmas Eve. We won’t be together on Christmas Eve this year but I’ll certainly be reading this one. I think we all will. I think you should too. Here it is.

Blog Posts Written by D. F. Lovett