Even though you only have a few days left before Christmas, you still have time to squeeze in a good Christmas book in those hours a day that you aren’t dedicating to shopping, wrapping, cooking or decorating.
To be honest, I usually try to avoid Christmas novels. I’m not a fan of the genre, and I have trouble pushing myself through the typical Christmas novel plots, of which there are three: (1) couple meets, hates each other, drinks hot chocolate and falls in love in time to kiss under the Christmas tree; (2) family hates each other but must meet for Christmas, at which point love wins the day and everyone is magically reconciled by drinking hot chocolate together; or (3) Santa saves the dying town/ bookstore/ dear sick grandpa/ kids’ hot chocolate stand.
Most Christmas novels are unrealistic romances with a little tinsel thrown over them, and I think I’ve expressed to you my negativity about romances.
But I can recommend two Christmas books by two of the world’s most popular authors — if you must read a Christmas book.
Both of these authors, John Grisham and James Patterson, depart completely from their usual fast-paced tales of legal or political intrigue to create something a little more readable than the usual Yule novel fare.
When our book club was given John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas to read in December 2007, I was excited! Knee-deep in wrapping paper, lists of things to buy and exhausting projects to complete by December 24, I was thrilled to think that I might learn how to skip the whole holiday and just pick up my normal life in January unscathed by the rigors of the season of too-much-to-do.
The Kranks (you know how this will turn out from the negative name Grisham assigns his fictional family) vow that this year they will skip Christmas. With their only child out of town, they decide to ignore the holiday. No frantic shopping for gifts that will just be re-gifted, no hours spent addressing Christmas cards, no hoisting a huge Frosty the Snowman to their roof to comply with their neighborhood’s decorating theme, no expensive annual Christmas Eve bash at their house. They’ll go on a nice, relaxing cruise instead.
It sounded good to me until I read about the community’s reaction. The printer is furious at losing their Christmas card business. Their friends are furious at having their usual Christmas Eve plans cancelled. Their neighbors threaten murder and mayhem when the see the uncooperative Kranks’ dark, undecorated house.
It sounded like a great idea, but apparently you can’t skip Christmas. I was so disappointed.
This year I read James Patterson’s book The Twelve Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas, which he wrote with collaborator Tad Safran. The zany title alone is enough to pull you in.
It is about a family that has mastered the art of skipping Christmas. The Sullivans have lost their wife and mother five years before. She had made life perfect for her hapless history professor husband Henry and their two children, 12-year-old Ella and 14-year old Will. Now Henry can’t face Katie’s favorite season, Christmas. It’s too painful so the family doesn’t celebrate at all. But, of course, in true Christmas novel fashion, the authors can’t let that happen.
So begins the arrival of a series of 12 odd and exasperating gifts. The first one is a partridge in a pear tree, if that gives you a clue to what happens on the next 11 days leading up to Christmas. By the end of the story, the Sullivan’s house has been all but destroyed by the activities of French hens, swans a-swimming in the fountain, and the particularly vicious geese a-laying all over the house. Thei Sullivans’ lives get particularly interesting—and crowded— when the lords a-leaping arrive.
By the end, of course, Christmas has been restored and life begins to seem more worth living to the Sullivans. At least they aren’t kissing under the Christmas tree, there’s no magic Santa, and very little hot chocolate is involved.
I appreciated the originality of both plots, and both authors are adept writers who present their situations with irony, wit and good sentence structure.
If it’s too late to read these before Christmas, read them in January. Having just survived the holiday yourself, you might be primed to sit down under your reading lamp with a cup of hot chocolate and join two families who struggle through Christmas and live to tell the tale, just as you will.
