Books like The Battle for Christmas — picked by fans

I love weird and mostly overlooked Christmas-related stuff, and there are few Holiday characters as weird and overlooked as the Krampus!

I loved the full-color photographs Ridenour includes of the Krampus (and adjacent figures), many of which I had never seen before. And a lot of the pictures feature a very menacing Krampus! There’s more to Christmas than just Santa Claus. 

I grew up with this book and rereading Dickens’ most famous work always feels like curling up in a favorite blanket. When I find myself overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of the season, the story of Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and Jacob Marley always reminds me of the true meaning of the holiday.

It’s probably cliché to say that I cry every year after reading it, but I do! I recommend the Penguin Classics edition of this festive tale because it includes some of Dickens’ other Christmas stories, which are worth reading, too! 

One of the things I love best about the Christmas season is how it’s a combination of many different things. Paganism, Christianity, and commerce have all contributed to Yuletide, resulting in a mishmash of traditions and customs.

I think holidays are stronger when they’ve been influenced by dozens of cultures. There’s room for everybody during the Holidays, and it’s always been that way. 

Today, the Christmas season is a festival of sparkling lights and happy carols, but I love the dark side of the Holidays too...the long nights, the spirits of the dead, and the menagerie of folkloric characters who are just as likely to leave a Christmas trick as a Christmas treat.

I didn’t find anything in this book scary, but I did find myself looking over my shoulder a few times wondering if I had unwittingly invited a Christmas gnome or elf into my home. I also appreciated the crafts and activities included throughout the book by the author, making for the perfect mix of the practical and the historical. 

Each time the ‘Little House’ books cross my path, I am reminded of where and when I first discovered the series. My dad regularly took my sister and I to the (Otis) Children’s Library, then located atop the Church Street hill in downtown Norwich, CT. We devoured the Little House books and much of the library’s young reader collection, usually finishing the books before their due date, when Dad was happy to drive us again. 

I probably identified with the Ingalls family. Their experience in the American frontier echoed certain life patterns of my dad’s immigrant family (a half-century later). Self-sufficiency, frugality, gratitude for small blessings, and appreciation for Nature’s beauty and bounties were just a few. This “Treasury” brings together many of Laura’s wonderful Christmas memories.

I love this story, although my heart was breaking the whole time I read it.

Sam and Rachel’s dream of a houseful of kids is going to come true, at least for 12 days, although it’s already too late to salvage their marriage. Too much has happened…or hasn’t.

Rachel and Sam have already faced more loss and disappointment than they can bear, but it’s amazing what the heart can handle when it needs to, albeit with lots of cracks and scar tissue.

And it’s Christmas, after all… 

I love curling up in my favourite armchair by the tree with a mug of hot chocolate to read this heavy, bumper-sized anthology.

It takes me back to Christmas Days spent lying on the rug in front of the fire reading festive annuals left under the tree by Father Christmas. Its twenty-eight stories are reassuringly familiar, ensuring satisfaction wherever I randomly choose to dip in. I really can’t imagine Christmas without it.

The 13th Gift is a mother’s memoir of an unforgettable Christmas. Just before the holidays, her husband suddenly dies. The family is devastated and lost; he was the glue in their family of five. The numb existence that sets in isolates them from one another. Christmas seems a bother, except to the young daughter. Then, a gift mysteriously appears on their porch.

I was pulled into this family’s touching day-by-day return from the abyss, thanks to the author’s storytelling and because I was reminded how powerful an act of kindness can be—and how simple. I think this true story inspires us to do more noticing and acting, when a person or family might need the help of an “angel.”

No list of Nordic-inspired picture books is complete without at least one book by Jan Brett!

While not specifically set in a Scandinavian country, the Nordic-sweatered elf, the Dala horse displayed prominently in a workroom, and the delightfully detailed borders place the book in this category for me and my Swedish-American family. 

When the children were small, we read this together many, many times. It follows the story of an elf charged with getting Santa’s reindeer ready for the big night. Teeka, the elf, is new to the job, and the reindeer are reluctant to follow her orders.

Each time I read it, I legitimately worry when the reindeer’s antlers become hopelessly tangled!

Dylan Thomas’s compressed and lyrical account of a young lad’s Christmas has always enchanted me, and it continues every time I read it or hear it read. I recommend listening to the author reading it, available on YouTube. It is delightful poetic prose, moving, amusing, and always surprising. I envy his style here and his wit, feeling, and language proficiency. I wish I could write like that.