War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy, 1869
Nikolai and Sonya are getting ready to put on a pantomime of sorts at Christmas time, and are so delighted with their costumes that they decide to visit the Melyukovs who live some distance away. They set out into a night of stars, frost and silence. Nikolai breathes in an “elixir of eternal youth and joy” – and falls in love with Sonya. He’s in woman’s attire, with tousled hair. Sonya is dressed as a man. But this is no deterrent. The moment could not be more charming. He “kissed her on the lips which wore a moustache and smelt of burnt cork”.
Christmas Shopping
Louis MacNeice, 1937
The little fir trees palpitate with candles/In hundreds of chattering households where the suburb/Straggles like nervous handwriting….
There is no predicting where MacNeice’s 1937 Christmas is going. But it’s a wonderful and intriguing period piece. Public libraries are filled with people reading newspapers, poring over the classifieds in search of better-paid jobs. The sense of Christmas as exhausting and expensive doesn’t change, although the London described no longer quite exists.
The Oxen
Thomas Hardy, 1915
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock./ “Now they are all on their knees,”/ An elder said as we sat in a flock…
This poem was published on Christmas Eve 1915 in the Times and has a cautious mood, appropriate to the moment and characteristic of Hardy. The Dorset superstition was that oxen used to kneel every Christmas Eve, honouring the holy birth. Hardy volunteers that were he invited by a farmhand to witness this miracle: “I should go with him in the gloom,/ Hoping it might be so.”
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott, 1868-69
The most sentimentally frugal Christmas in American literature. In the absence of stockings, Jo slips her hand under her pillow and draws out a crimson-covered book. “She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going on a long journey.” (It may or may not be a bible, it is not spelt out.) Each girl has a differently coloured volume. Meg: green, Beth: dove, Amy: blue. As a child, I coveted these books as anyone with a taste for nice stationery would.
The Little Christmas Tree
Stella Gibbons, 1940
A writer is looking forward to a solitary Christmas but it feels inconveniently mournful until three exuberant children – strangers – show up on her snowy step and share her festive dinner. We confidently predict, once we have assessed the potential of the handsome father who comes to collect the children, that they may all be about to happily outstay their welcome. There is a promising air about him – desirable dessert to round off a Christmas feast. The Little Christmas Tree is a big-hearted story that sweeps itself off its own feet.
The Dead
James Joyce, 1914
At the Misses Morkans’ annual dance, Gabriel Conroy gives Lily, the servant girl, a tip after having riled her by asking about her marriage prospects. “Christmas-time! Christmas-time!” he blusters to cover for his embarrassment, pressing money into her hand. Later he has to “pilot” a drunk across a landing, converse on the subject of galoshes, carve a goose. The story is remarkable for its ambiguous, snowy epiphany (the event itself is on the Feast of Epiphany). It’s a wonderfully detailed description of the insecurities beneath surface gaiety.
Queenie
Alice Munro, 1999
This abject story has at its centre a vanishing Christmas cake and an officious husband who accuses his wife, Queenie, of having drunkenly given it away to a needy young man with whom he suspects she may be smitten. Violence ensues as she protests her innocence and Christmas is spent in tears. The story is as rich as the most superior and fermented of Christmas cakes. An incidental ingredient to savour is Munro’s description of the way that Christmas cards can serve as melancholy reminders of estrangement.
A Serious Talk
Raymond Carver, 1980
If relationships are in trouble, Christmas is the last straw, as Carver shows in this masterly and bleak entertainment. An estranged husband tells his wife how good she looks in the cashmere jumper he has given her. But it’s too late for compliments. The husband (who we learn indirectly has disgraced himself on the day itself) returns next morning for vodka and reproaches: “‘Vera,’ he said. ‘It’s Christmas. That’s why I came.’ ‘It’s the day after Christmas,’ she said. ‘I don’t ever want to see another one.’”
Ending Up
Kingsley Amis, 1974
Another example of using Christmas to magnify existing awfulness. It’s being “celebrated” in Tuppeny-hapenny Cottage by as ghastly a crew of septuagenarians as one could ever hope not to meet. There is Marigold losing her marbles, obnoxious Adela nursing a gastric ulcer, and her foul-mouthed brigadier brother, Bernard Bastable, with his interest in lavatorial matters. And there’s George Zeyer, a pitifully speechless professor of central European history, and Shorty the servant who uncorks enough drink to guarantee ugly entertainment.
Christmas
John Betjeman, 1954
This poem is a cosily reassuring and uncontroversial combination of the holy and the homely. There are “tortoise stoves”, ivy in churches, crowded shops. Betjeman also, at intervals, manages to jingle a more or less spiritual Christmas bell, although his best joke is that these bells can be heard in what is possibly Godless luxury: “And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’/ Even to the shining ones who dwell/ Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.”
