Christmas Reading

I know, I know. "Christmas reading?! As in 'books'? WHO has time to read in December??"

Well, I do.

You see, what I don't like about December is what it does to us. Or rather, what we do to it. Too many people turn December into one exhausting, frenzied treadmill race (not like their lives weren't frenzied already...).

Six or seven years ago I was shopping at K Mart the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Suddenly, I stopped in an aisle--stepping almost beneath a clothes rack lest I got trampled--and watched what was happening. Children were screaming, their mothers, yelled. Christmas music blared, and adults sped down aisles with carts and their Visa cards.

And then, from somewhere within me, I heard Jesus sadly say, "I never meant my birthday to be like this."

Well, I could say amen! and then go careening my crazy way through the crowded, mad highways of December. Or, I can choose another road, the peaceful, dreamy forest-and-snow one. One which lets me slow down, smell the roses (poinsettias?) and read, read, read in-between addressing Christmas cards, buying gifts and pondering, "it's not all about making myself a nervous Christmas wreck."

So here is what I read each December. Here are the books (and one website)which keep me on that calm Christmas road, the quiet one where just ahead, around the curve, marches that Different Drummer whose beat I try to follow instead.

Four years ago I discovered Tate's Online Advent Calendar . Tate is a cute cat who delights both children and adults (well, she delights this adult, anyway). I noticed this year's calendar is different than all the others-- you must search for the correct number of the day. Hint: Today is the first day and you must scroll the picture to the right in order to find #1. Don't forget to push play afterward.


Last year my friend, Ellen, recommended the thickest, most delicious, old-fashioned Christmas book ever made. It's called the Good Old Days Big Christmas Book and is filled with stories which first appeared in Good Old Days Magazine. It's edited by Edward J. Kutlowski. I bought it online and only wish I'd discovered it sooner.

Also last year I bought The Christmas Almanac, a brand new book edited by Natasha Tabori Fried and Lena Tabori. So very old-fashioned, also, with tons of gorgeous paintings from days gone by.

Five years ago I discovered this book at Salvation Army for a mere ten cents: The Children's Book of Christmas Stories edited by Asa Don Dickinson and Ada M. Skinner. Copyrighted 1913. The very best 10 cents I ever spent in my life.

Christmas From the Heart of Home by Susan Branch. I'd wanted this book for many years and Tom gave it to me as a gift Christmas of 2002. It's filled with Christmas recipes and memories and Susan's wonderful art which I'd mentioned in an earlier post.

I do hope you'll join me this December out on the quiet, curvy Christmas road. We can take a peaceful walk together beneath the snowy evergreen branches--and count our blessings.


Repeat after me: I vow not to spend this December in fast-forward.





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