The year is coming to an end and the Holidays are here! Why wait until the new year to make a resolution to read more? This festive season, curl up with some hot chocolate and a great book to get you in the mood for a celebration. We’ve got a list of books across every genre for this solstice that will have you deep in all the winter feels before you know it!
1. Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
This is the most classic Christmas book you’ll read: it’s a book literally full of letters from Father Christmas! Tolkien is known for his extraordinarily impactful work in fiction with The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series, but he was also a dedicated father who wrote to his children every Christmas, playing the role of Santa Claus. These letters tell wonderful stories of Father Christmas’ adventures, and they will certainly put you in a playful Christmas mood!
2. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Though not specifically about Christmas, this magical realism book set in 1920s Alaska is a beautiful fantasy novel about family. The main characters are Jack and Mabel, an aging couple who are childless, grieving, and unable to communicate well with each other. In the Alaskan winter, they see a young girl called Faina who is like a child of the woods, and through caring for her, they start to heal and transform themselves. This book will certainly have you knee-deep in the feels, and paint a beautiful picture of the Alaskan winters for you!
3. Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson
This collection of stories will let you portal into the spirit of the Holiday season with their innovative nature! Full of the childlike wonder of Christmas, this book is perfect for reading with loved ones or while traveling back home for the holidays. The stories range from trees with mysterious powers to a tinsel baby that talks, philosophical fairies to flying dogs, a haunted house, and a disappearing train – rest assured you’ll have a playful and exciting time reading them this Christmas!
4. The Night Before Christmas by Nikolai Gogol
This book is an old Ukrainian tale that is still traditionally read aloud to children on Christmas Eve in Ukraine and Russia. It is about the adventures of Vakula, the blacksmith, in his fight against the devil, who has stolen the moon above the village of Dikanka and is wreaking havoc on its inhabitants, all to win the love of the most beautiful girl in town. It’s a dark story, but it’s still a traditional holiday tale – check it out this winter!
5. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie and Poirot are both legends: let the best-selling author of all time and her incredibly popular investigator partake in your Christmas celebrations! In Poirot’s Christmas, there’s a family reunion for Christmas and family drama with a bloody twist – murder. This won’t put you in a cheerful holiday spirit, but it’s certainly a gripping thriller set in the Christmas holiday season that will keep you intrigued till the very end!
6. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
The last book in this list is a book packed full of Christmas holiday relationships, reminiscing, and rituals. An autobiographical recollection of Capote’s boyhood in rural Alabama, A Christmas Memory has turned into a holiday classic. It takes us through the friendship between a 7-year-old boy and his distant cousin who is an elderly lady in her 60s. This is just the kind of heartwarming Christmas story filled with humor and fondness that you need to truly feel the essence of Christmas!
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