The dreaded "C" Word - Are christmas books suffering from an identity crisis? This week's ReadItTorial

Maybe we've just outgrown them. Maybe it's just that Christmas is no longer that magical time in C's life when she can't wait for Santa to blunder his way down the chimney to drop off a sackload of presents (including, we'd hope, a ton of books).

Or maybe it's that this week's ReadItTorial is talking about the dreaded "C" word (Christmas - not my daughter!) way too frickin' early. I mean it's not even November yet.

But like all dutiful book bloggers who try to stay ahead of the curve, we've been reading and reviewing this year's crop of christmas books released so far - and we're considerably underwhelmed.

In fact, let's be honest about it, most of the time Christmas books are truly awful, recycling saccharine-sweet messages that make you want to claw your own eyes out, or worse - resorting to farts, poo, wee, bums and pants to try and jolly up the season of goodwill.

The reason for using Raymond Briggs' classic "Father Christmas" in the header image of this document is not because this is a bad example of a christmas book, but the very best example of a children's picture book (some might argue - given Raymond Briggs' 'comic strip' stylings in some of his stories that this is more a graphic novel than a picture book) that has a christmas theme but has so much fun with the whole concept that you could read it at any time of year and still giggle about it.

In fact we have - for this and his follow-up with a holidaying Santa.

Many authors tap the christmas market quite successfully for 'bread and butter' books but seldom few make books that you'd consider for any 'book of the year' awards. Arguably so, but whenever we draw up our list we very rarely bother to look at anything even vaguely yuletide-related, because it never feels like that's where the innovation, the excitement, the true originality will be found. It's nearly always in books that (statistically, for us at least) arrive slap bang in the middle of the year just after the first few major book fairs have been and gone.

So why is it so hard to write a decent christmas book? I suspect that it's for the same reason it's notoriously hard to write a hit christmas song / single. The whole season is draped in so much cheesy nonsense that it's impossible to see through all that tinsel and garishness and nigh on impossible to deliver a message that hasn't been seen or heard a zillion times before.

Before this article went live, a few blogger / Twitter chums did actually see the point in beginning the blog talk about Christmas books a bit earlier than our usual December Booky Advent Calendar. So how about this for a compromise. Below are ten truly awe-inspiring Christmas books from yore that stand as brilliant examples of how do to Christmas books 'right' (11 if you include Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs of course, which you absolutely should!)

In no particular order...


"How Winston Delivered Christmas: An Advent Story in Twenty-four-and-a-half Chapter" by Alex T. Smith 

(Macmillan Children's Books) 

Part Advent, part brilliantly inspirational story about sending and receiving wonderful letters at christmas, and an entirely classy and fabulous wordy book that will keep you reading every bedtime right up until the big day itself!




"Home Alone - The Classic Illustrated Storybook" by John Hughes and Kim Smith 
"Emily Brown and Father Christmas" by Neal Layton and Cressida Cowell 
"The Accidental Father Christmas" by Tom McLaughlin 
"Christmas Dinner of Souls" by Ross Montgomery  "Shooting at the Stars - The Christmas Truce of 1914" by John Hendrix  "When It Snows" by Richard Collingridge