Christmas, 15 classic books to read to experience the atmosphere

At Christmas there are books that manage to give a magical atmosphere. Books capable of making generations of readers dream and that manage to unite adults and children.

Books to read at least once in a lifetime. Books in which the imagination becomes the protagonist and for this very reason they have also become very successful films in the cinema.

Books aimed at adults and books written for children. Books that should not be missing in our library and to give away if you want to give a special and forever gift.

The great classic books to read at Christmas

A Christmas Carol  by Charles Dickens  

A Christmas Carol is an 1843 short fiction novel by Charles Dickens, and is also one of his most famous and popular works. The novel is one of Dickens’s examples of criticism of society and is also one of the most famous and moving Christmas stories in the world.

The Christmas Carol tells of the conversion of the old and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge, visited on Christmas night by three spirits (Christmas of the past, present and future), preceded by a warning from the ghost of his deceased friend and colleague Jacob Marley.

Il Canto combines the taste of the Gothic tale with the commitment to fight poverty, child exploitation and illiteracy, problems apparently exacerbated by the Poor Law (Law against poverty).

The Grinch by Dr. Seuss

The Grinch (How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) is a children’s story written in rhyming verse by Dr. Seuss, with illustrations by the author. It was published as a book by Random House in 1957. The book criticizes the commercialization of Christmas.

The book was adapted into the 1966 animated television film The Grinch’s Christmas Story!. In 2000 in the film of the same name starring Jim Carrey and in 2018 in the third film adaptation directed by Yarrow Cheney and Scott Mosier.

Is it possible not to love Christmas? Sure, if you’re lonely, ugly and mean like the Grinch, a wicked little monster who lives in the city of Chi-non-so. With the sole purpose of spoiling the holidays for his I don’t know who fellow citizens, he dresses up as Santa Claus and combines all sorts of things.

Truman Capote’s Christmas Remembrance 

First published in 1956, the book tells of Buddy and Sook’s friendship. Oh yes, because Buddy is only seven years old and Sook a few dozen older… Buddy only knows that she is a distant cousin of hers, but above all she is a joker, always ready to joke and build kites, their common passion.

Buddy doesn’t have anyone else in the world, Sook doesn’t even – except that handful of grumpy relatives who live in the same house, and always treat them badly; perhaps precisely because of their unusual complicity.

What is certain is that Buddy and Sook love each other very much and that every year, when Christmas approaches, they have a ritual of their own, which tastes like woods, nuts, fir trees and gifts. But this Christmas he will leave a special memory in Buddy, since he will be the last one they will spend together, and to keep him alive in memory, Buddy will tell his story when he grows up

Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

Poirot’s Christmas (original title Hercule Poirot’s Christmas) is a mystery novel written by Agatha Christie and published in 1939 in English and in 1940 in Italy. It is the writer’s seventeenth adventure starring the famous Hercule Poirot.

Gorston Hall, Longdale, English countryside. Thirties. Christmas. Families set aside conflicts and gather to celebrate, sometimes only with the aim of masking fierce hatreds and rivalries.

And in fact the family reunion wanted by the old and tyrannical Simeon Lee, who has called his children and grandchildren around him, turns into drama. The old patriarch is mysteriously killed in a room locked from the inside. Is the killer a family member? Everyone is suspect, everyone has a reason to want him killed.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

The snowman (The Snowman) is a 1978 illustrated children’s book by the English author Raymond Briggs. It lacks words completely, and the illustrations (divided into cartoons that punctuate the narrative as in a graphic novel) were made exclusively with colored pencils.

On a cold winter morning, a boy wakes up to find that everything is covered in snow outside. Filled with joy, he runs into the garden and starts making a snowman.

At midnight, the child suddenly wakes up, goes to the window and can’t believe his eyes: the snowman has come to life! Excited, the boy rushes down the stairs and when he opens the door he finds a smiling snowman in front of him. This is the beginning of an adventure that will last all night.

For our part, we offer you an updated edition totally inspired by the original written by Michael Morpurgo.

John RR Tolkien’s Letters from Santa Claus

On December 25, 1920, JRR Tolkien began sending his children letters signed Santa Claus. Stuffed in snow-white envelopes, decorated with drawings, franked with Polar Postal stamps and containing illustrated narratives and poems, they continued to arrive at Tolkien’s house for over thirty years, brought by the postman or other mysterious ambassadors.

A selection of these annual messages, sometimes transcribed in the form of colored logogriffs, form this fairy tale entitled ‘The Christmas Letters’, written in installments by a Tolkien not so much in the mood for paternal and didactic joy, as on the back of the hippogriff his philological and ironic imagination.

The Legend of the Christmas Rose by Selma Lagerlof

Published in 1908, the book tells of a snowy forest that transforms into a wonderful garden at Christmas, rugged mountains that reveal silver mines, hosts of lost souls who suffer in eternal ice, cared for by an abandoned old lady who does not resign herself to solitude.

The typical atmospheres of Nordic stories, fairy tales, myths and legends are all present in the book, in line with the great magic of Christmas. 

The Tailor of Gloucester  by Beatrix Potter

The most famous story of an author who became a legend returns with the original drawings. The Gloucester tailor , populated by the mice so loved by Beatrix Potter and her readers of all ages, is a Christmas tale inspired by a true story and first published privately in 1903.

An old Gloucester tailor has to finish the suit for the mayor of the city that he will wear for his wedding on Christmas day. It will be a beautiful dress, with the cherry-colored jacket embroidered with roses and violets.

But the old man falls ill and with the help of some mice the mayor will have the most beautiful suit he has ever worn.

Escape from Christmas by John Grisham

Escape from Christmas is a novel by John Grisham published in 2001. A book that denounces the consumerist aspect of Christmas, the hypocrisy of the people and false moralisms.

Christmas is approaching, and with it all that it entails: a beautiful party, certainly, perhaps the most beautiful of the whole year, but in the consumerist world it is also synonymous with big expenses to buy gifts, decorations, charities and set the family tables.

The Krank family had an outlay of $6,100 for this the previous year. This year, however, her daughter Blair, a recent graduate, is leaving on a humanitarian mission in Peru, so without her, celebrating her Christmas loses its meaning.

Mr. Luther Krank then decides to invest more or less the amount spent the previous year on a Caribbean cruise. That means no decorations, no partying with all the neighbors, no charity, no turkey, no presents, no Frosty on the roof.

The Planet of Christmas Trees by Gianni Rodari

The Planet of Christmas Trees was published for the first time as a story in the newspaper Paese Sera in the number of 24/25 December 1959. In the collection Filastrocche in cielo e in terra, published in 1960, a nursery rhyme was included inspired by the story and also entitled Il Christmas tree planet

In the first volume edition of 1962 a second part was added, entitled Things from that planet, containing jokes and nursery rhymes relating to the world where the story is set

A child, carried into space by a space vessel disguised as a rocking horse, meets aliens who, freed from work thanks to machines, live in a ‘planet of plenty’ and devote themselves only to science, the arts and politics.

But what do these Spacers want from him? If to the shrewd eyes of an adult the plot may seem simplistic at times, it must be said that the book dealt with absolutely revolutionary themes for the time and still current today.

Like the idea that children should prepare from an early age to become the rulers of tomorrow’s world, but without losing their liveliness, spontaneity and the ability to be friends with everyone.

The Fir Tree  by Hans Christian Andersen

The Fir Tree (Grantraeet) is a fairy tale by Danish writer and poet Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1844. 

It is the story of a small fir tree that couldn’t wait to grow up to become as big and beautiful as the fir trees that surrounded it. He too wanted to leave, like those majestic trees that the woodcutters cut down and loaded onto the carts as Christmas approached. Would it be his turn too?

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus  by Frank Baum

First published in 1902 two years after “The Wizard of Oz”, “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” tells the story of the most beloved character of all time: from his childhood in the enchanted forest of Burzee – the same all the magical protagonists of the Wizard – to the desire to dedicate one’s life to bringing gifts to others.

Among wooden toys and fairy creatures, we are guided to the discovery of many Christmas secrets: the origin of the use of the tree and the stocking, the reason why Santa Claus comes down from the fireplace, how it is possible that, in a single night , you alone deliver presents to all the children in the world.

A story that knows how to revive the charm, warmth and imagination that made Oz’s masterpiece a classic of American literature.

Christmas Tales by Louisa May Alcott