Christmas Night Reading

Turns out I wasn’t in the mood for Christmas murder mysteries after all. So I pulled two slim volumes off my shelf and read them last evening in my cheery ~~reading~~ Christmas nook.

Both books were discovered during a 2019 hot and humid summer trip to New England – when my mind was far away from Christmas.

I discovered the first book when I was accidentally left behind at our friend’s home in Maine. Everyone else had driven off in two cars to their nearby lake cottage and each car thought I was in the other one – I had just ducked into the powder room to change into a swim suit. I was not in the least dismayed. All alone, I happily browsed the bookshelves of a kindred spirit book lover. I discovered this little treasure – read it while in front of a fan — and made note of the title so I could get my very own copy – which I did this year.

Lanterns Across the Snow by Susan Hill

This is a gentle little book about an English country Christmas at the turn of the last century. Fanny reminiscences about Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and St. Stephen’s Day when she was nine years old.

A happy childhood is like a magic circle. Lit from within, it throws a beam forward into the present. Snow always fell on Christmas Eve, fat and soft as goose feathers, to lie like a quilt upon the ground all winter. That is what Fanny remembers, now that she is old, at another Christmas time.

This story brings back the magical of Christmas Eve and the expectation of luscious foods, that were not available every day of the year. The contrasts of cold and warmth, of hope and despair, of birth and death all wrapped up in a warm and nostalgic atmosphere. It even has some lovely woodcut illustrations.

It’s short but sweet, and would make great reading for Christmas Eve or a cold winter night by the fire.

Christmas at Eagle Pond by Donald Hall

When visiting New Hampshire, I always try to visit Toadstool Books and dip into one of their three independent bookstores, each of which are beautifully curated. This visit they had a special section dedicated to Donald Hall, the 14th US poet laureate who lived on a farm in New Hampshire. And, although it was July, I purchased this Christmas book to bring home to my collection.

In December of 1940, twelve-year-old Donnie Hall gets on a train from his comfortable Connecticut home to fulfill a dream: to spend Christmas with his grandparents on their farm on Eagle Pond in southern New Hampshire.

He tells of a Christmas in the country; family dinners, being snow-bound, horse-drawn buggies, wood-burning stoves, milking cows in a frigid barn before dawn, and making popcorn balls for the church Christmas party. A vivid portrait of a vanished New England

The illustrations by Mary Azarian are lovely and fit perfectly with the book’s tone.

I’m going to break my rule and give away this little book’s secret, which is revealed in Mr. Hall’s note at the book’s end — he never really got to spend Christmas at his grandparents’ farm when he was a boy. Instead, in his eighties, having inherited Eagle Pond Farm and done most of his greatest work as a poet there, he imagines what a Christmas at Eagle Pond would have been like for his twelve-year-old self. Based on the stories tole by his mother and his grandparents, he wanted to give himself “the thing I most wanted, a childhood Christmas at Eagle Pond.”

This is a beautifully spare and gorgeously written little Christmas tale.

Unlike my intended holiday mystery reads — these slim volumes are quite simple, don’t have a complicated plot, there’s no mystery, and no conflict. That made them my perfect Christmas night’s reading. And, what so many of us want this Christmas to be.