Christmas Stories from Andersen to Angela Carter

 

Last Christmas underneath the Christmas Tree I found an extraordinary book. The selection of very short but meaningful stories edited by Jessuca Harrison. Although the book shouldn't be judge by its cover, you hve to admit that there is something mysterious and enchanted in the white and blue landscape. The only thing I notice is the lack of light in the window of the cottage, but believe me there is a lot of light and sparks of wisdom in the stories.

On the backcover you can find a quotation:

And in fact this a collection of moving stories which take us from the frozen northern villages full of snow to capital cities like Paris or little cottages.

Here, as the publisher writes, you can find classic tales from writers including Truman Capote, Shirley Jackson, Dylan Thomas, Saki and Chekhov, as well as little-known treasures such as Italo Calvino's wry sideways look at Christmas consumerism, Wolfdietrich Schnurre's story of festive ingenuity in Berlin, Selma Lagerlof's enchanted forest in Sweden, and Irène Nemerovsky's dark family portrait. Featuring santas, ghosts, trolls, unexpected guests, curmudgeons and miracles, here is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short story writers of all time.

Trust me the stories collected are really non-obvious. The good example is 'St Antony and His Pig' written by Paul Arène. The story takes us back to the early centuries of the Christian era when St. Anthony lived alone in the Egyptian desert, fighting the battle for sanctity, with his only company being the devils who tormented him and his faithful pig Barrabas.

One day before Christmas a group of children from nearby village is visting him. What happened next? Listen...

The chidren coughed and wiped their noses, and Barrabas grunted with his feet comfortably buried in the warm ashes.

The saint threw back his hood, shook the snow from his shoulders, passed his hand over his long grey beard, all hung with little icicles, and having seated himself, began:

'So you want me to tell you about my tempation?' ....

And that's how the story starts.

Interested? I was... and read the story till the end and wasn't disappointed at all :)

I'm going to reread the stories for many Christmases to come.