There is a tendency to think of Russian and Eastern European writers as ... well, a little depressing. This is not altogether true. Granted, Dostoevsky can take a grim turn (though nothing is as depressing as his happy endings, trust me), and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina does end in death and despair. But Russia is also the country of Bulgakov. And Nikolai Gogol, who precedes either, has a bit of both. He is also one of the great short story writers (thus putting paid to the idea of Russian literature as solely consisting of endless novels, in case you were labouring under that delusion).

Gogol was Ukrainian, though he wrote in Russian, and so I assume both sides in the current conflict lay claim to him). He moved to St. Petersburg at the age of 19, and only a few years later started publishing stories "from Dikanka" (a Cossack village in Ukraine). "The Night Before Christmas" (sometimes called "Christmas Eve") was one of them (originally published in 1832).

It opens quite conventionally. Or at least without any major surprises.

The day of Christmas Eve ended, and the night began, cold and clear.

Then, suddenly, a witch flies out of a chimney, collects a sleeve full of stars, and is soon joined by a devil

who had one night left to roam among Christian folk and teach them devilish tricks. Tomorrow at the first ...

I think I was eight the first time I read the Narnia books. The Christian allegory went right over my head. I did wonder why Aslan was a lamb at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Threader (it seemed rather silly), but other than that, I was a happy reader. Quite a few things went over my head at the time, but I was used to that; in fact, I still am. I don't expect it will change.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not the first book in the internal chronology of the Narnia series (and I must admit that when I found The Magician's Nephew, I felt a little like I imagine archaeologists do when they find a text only hinted at in later ones), but it was in fact the first one published (and, as far as I know, the first one filmed -- has anyone actually tried to film The Magician's Nephew -- or The Horse and his Boy for that matter?). It is probably also the one with the clearest Christian allusions (with the possible exception of The Last Battle, where Lewis pretty much gives up on allusions and goes straight for explicit declarations).

Narnia was always going to feature in this series on Christmas books (and not just because it has the best title of them all). More specifically, this particular book in the Narnia series had to be here. Because Christmas permeates the first half of the story ...

Perhaps the most famous opening and closing lines in all of Christmas literature (and yes, I am including the Bible excerpt in that) come from an American poem by Clement Clarke Moore, written in 1823. Moore was a serious man with a serious reputation, and did not originally acknowledge the poem as his (it was not quite on par with his Bible studies and his Hebrew lexicon); but he seems to have changed his mind later.

I suspect, however, that these days most people, certainly this side of the pond, learn of the poem first through the parodies that reference it. It has a very simple rhyme scheme (rhyming couplets, if you are interested in the names of things) and the metre (anapaestic tetrametre, to be specific, which you also saw in the Grinch -- I wonder why) is more bouncy (even galloping?) and distinctive than the more pedestrian iambic pentameter of Shakespeare. There is a Lovecraftian parody (what is it with Lovecraft and Christmas?), a Batman one, a Star Trek one (actually, there are a lot of those), and so on. It goes on forever. And that is not even counting all the texts that only reference parts of the original poem. It is worth looking at where all those parodies come from: Ad Fontes!

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring ...

Neil Gaiman has a history of writing variations on well known stories, and doing it well. There was the incomparable "A Study in Emerald", which unites Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraftian horror at last (granted, so did the other stories in the collection Shadows over Baker Street, though none as wonderfully). Likewise, there was "Snow Glass Apples", which sees the story of Snow White through rather darker glasses than Disney ever managed. Perhaps to add balance, there is also a surprisingly upbeat take on the Cthulhu mythos.

It should, at any rate, therefore not come as any sort of great shock that the man has a take on the Santa Claus story which departs a little from the beaten track. In short, I hereby present the antithesis to L. Frank Baum's book-length story of happy nymphs and the glory of toys. In every way. Where Baum's book has two hundred pages, Gaiman makes do with one (in fact the story, including the title, is exactly 100 words long); where Baum's Santa is a happy creature bent on improving the lives of children everywhere, Gaiman's is ... not.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

Not the classic opening to a Christmas story, really. While the idea of an immortal being envying the mortal is not altogether new, it is rarely paired with cheerful ...

I guess it's called Christmas for a reason (the Christ and Mass parts of the word suggests something rather more overtly religious than the rather more archaic Yule). While to me, the holiday is very much a secular event, and I think of it as part of a long tradition of midwinter festivals that are there to promise that the sun is not actually going away forever (and we all need that reassurance on occasion), it would seem churlish to bypass the text that is most commonly associated with the origin of the current Western incarnation of the festival.

In Norwegian, it is called "Jule-evangeliet", the Christmas Gospel. I haven't come across an English name for it, except the book, chapter and verse: Luke 2:1-20. The Gospel of Luke is not the oldest; Mark, however, does not begin his account until the baptism, and is therefore useless for Christmas purposes. Matthew could be a candidate (he is the one with the story of the wise men and king Herod killing all the children), though; but perhaps someone felt that angels appearing to shepherds was more appropriate to the season than magicians from the East having divined it from the stars (there is also less murdering of babies in Luke, which helps set the tone of goodwill towards men).

St. Luke is the patron saint of students ...

If you have not heard of this book, or of Mavis Doriel Hay for that matter, that is probably not your fault (I don't think she even has a wikipedia page, which in this day and age must be the height of obscurity). I came across the novel by chance, and only thanks to the British Library's recent effort to republish out of print crime classics in its collection (of which I now own a surprising number).

The book was originally published by Skeffington & sons in 1936 as The Santa Klaus Murder; compiled by M. Doriel Hay from the accounts written by several of those concerned; but that edition has been out of print for ages, and there aren't even used copies to be had on all of ViaLibri, except the recent British Library edition (though that does not keep some people from trying to charge nearly £50 for a new soft-cover book that is now very much in print). Its publication date places it squarely in the Golden Age of detective fiction, and it shows several indications of that. For example, I think it follows all the rules on Ronald Knox' Detective Story Decalogue (though it does fall short of some on S.S. Van Dine's rather more extreme list -- then again, I don't know of many good ...

Unlike Star Wars, which must never ever again be mentioned in the context of Christmas, ever, Star Trek remains comparatively unblemished. Memory Alpha lists the various appearances of the holiday in the series, and I note with unblemished joy the total absence of the words "Holiday Special", "Planet of the Wookies" or "weird, surrealist dance numbers". All as it should be. What Star Trek has produced, however, is a a short picture book about Khristmas.This is not the first Klingon/Christmas crossover (I direct your attention to A Klingon Christmas Carol), but today's text has thankfully been translated into English and is therefore more easily accessible to those of us who have made the wrong priorities growing up.

We are dealing with yet another poem; don't blame me: there is something about Christmas that seems to inspire the poetic spirit. This one is rather out of the ordinary, however; and I am not sure how to explain it to those of you who do not immediately get it. It begins,

'Tis only on Khristmas
We Klingons feel mirth --
the day of the warrior
Kahless's birth.

Kahless was the founder of ...

Trying to get a hold of this book is not easy; I had a few unsuccessful attempts: Apparently, if you ask at Blackwells for a book called Discords by a female author writing under the name George Egerton, people will assume you don't know the basics of literary history, and that you really meant George Eliot.

I won't pretend to be a specialist on George Egerton, however; in fact, this novella, "The Regeneration of Two" would not appear here if it had not been suggested to me by Clare Stainthorp, who clearly has better contacts in the obscure Christmas books underground than I have. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable Saturday in the National Library of Scotland reading their copy, however, and decided it could not be left out.

Egerton's real name was Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, and while she is classed as a feminist "New Woman" writer, that is not unproblematic, as she was not altogether in favour of the suffrage movement, and attempted to distance herself from the label. She was certainly radical, though, encouraging sexual freedom for women (possibly one of the reasons why she wrote under a male pseudonym). This is very much a topic in "Regeneration of Two", as well; but there is a second reason for its inclusion, which I imagine will become readily apparent any moment now. I will admit the opening sentence may not set the Christmas ...

The story of the Nutcracker is unusual in that so many people know it primarily as a ballet, accompanied by Tchaikovsky's excellent music and generally scattered with Christmas cheer. But the ballet is only half the story (quite literally). (In an interesting twist, it is actually based on an adaptation made by Alexandre Dumas -- the author of The Three Musketeers (the usual "if you haven't read it, what are you doing with your life" comment applies).) The original, however, was written by E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Hoffmann, incidentally, has a history of inspiring musical people. The most obvious example outside of The Nutcracker is that Offenbach wrote an absolutely brilliant opera based on the Tales of Hoffmann.

But returning to the novella at hand: You can read it here (though in English translation; he was inconsiderate enough to write it in German originally).

The story opens as Marie and Fritz Stahlbaum are waiting to see what gifts and clockwork toys will be brought them by the baby Jesus and their Godfather Drosselmeier, respectively. Drosselmeier arrives, looking rather sinister.

He was short and scrawny, his face was cowered with wrinkles, and he wore a big, black patch instead of a right eye. He also had no hair on his head, which is why he sported a very lovely periwig made of spun glass and very artistic.

Which he is ...

I will admit that I would probably have gone to great lengths to include a Sherlock Holmes story in this series, but thankfully I don't have to. Go to great lengths, that is: The perfect story is right there in the very first collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). It is titled "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" (which, I grant you, does not automatically scream Christmas, but stay with me) and was first published in The Strand Magazine in January 1892.

An American publication gave it the title "The Christmas Goose that Swallowed the Diamond," which is a little more festive; but I feel that rather gives the game away too early. Pretend I did not mention that.

It opens in 221B Baker Street, as so many Sherlock Holmes stories do, even though Watson has actually moved out at this point in order to marry the most insipid woman in literature (that may be an exaggeration, but probably not).

I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He as lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the ...