Christmas Days

November 1, 2016
Ghosts, fairies, self-revelation, and friendly seasonal recipes give this collection a potentially wide-ranging appeal for readers as well as gift shoppers.Winterson (The Gap of Time, 2015, etc.), the versatile British writer, has gathered 12 Yule-themed stories in a book laced with bits of autobiography both in the introduction--a handy guide to the history of Christmas--and in the dishes she describes after each tale. She is especially good with the supernatural, using eerie and magical elements in ways that hark back to Poe and Dickens. In "Spirit of Christmas," a child trapped in "BUYBUYBABY, the world's biggest department store," helps a couple shed their materialism. "Christmas in New York" has an O. Henry feel as its hero discovers the explanations behind the magic that cures his misanthropy. Apparitions, strange noises, a madman, a kitchen knife, and a Stephen King-ish turn near the end--all these make "Dark Christmas" very dark indeed. "The Snowmama" brings some entertaining playfulness and silly puns (soul becomes Snowl) to the living-snowman idea. "The Silver Frog," with suggestions of Oliver Twist and Roald Dahl's Matilda, arranges a plague of magic silver frogs to deal with the meanie heading an orphanage. The story stands in counterpoint to the author's laconic "I am adopted and it didn't go well." Winterson's prose is often witty and sometimes lyrical, as in this description of Bethlehem before the first Christmas in the quite wonderful "The Lion, the Unicorn and Me": "a musty, rusty, fusty pudding of a town...its people cussed and blustering." The recipes seem doable and appetizing and come with intriguing glimpses of the writer, her friends, and their Christmas rituals. Spooky, inventive, funny, maybe a tad didactic or cloying here and there, Winterson's mixed bag of fictional treats has a 19th-century charm much needed in the grim 21st.

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December 1, 2016
Christmas was an island of happiness in an otherwise grim childhood for Winterson, an exceptionally imaginative novelist (The Daylight Gate, 2013) and commanding memoirist (Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal, 2012), inspiring her to celebrate the holiday by writing an annual Christmas story. She gathers a dozen of her spellbinding tales here to mark the 12 days of Christmas as well as a dozen holiday recipes (mince pies, custard), each linked to a personal anecdote or remembrance, including a tribute to her friend, crime writer Ruth Rendell and her pickled red cabbage. The collection opens with a rambunctiously wise history of Christmas, in which Winterson takes account of its mishmash of traditionspagan, Roman, Turkish, Norse, Celtic, and commercialand avows her love of ghost stories. Her own involve a haunted house, a snowwoman come alive, an iPad-wielding Christmas fairy, and an argumentative couple infused with the Christmas spirit after helping a magical child. Spooky, clever, funny, and poignant, Winterson's supernatural tales refresh our appreciation of what it truly means to give, to love, and to share joy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2016

The recipient of Whitbread, John Llewellyn Rhys, E.M. Forster, and Stonewall honors, Winterson's books range from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to the New York Times best-selling Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? For years, she has written a new story each holiday season, and here she brings together 12 stories to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas. They're magical and slightly spooky, with flying dogs, philosophizing fairies, a talking tinsel baby, and a disappearing train, among other wonders. But then Christmas is always a time for surprises.

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