The Faber Book of Christmas: Simon Rae

I have read many books on christmas - short stories, cookery, christmas history and poems. This book provides a wonderful cornucopia of christmas gems. It contains a good mix of everything and is an an honest 'tip of the hat' to the season. It is not sugar coated nor dour but rather pulls together christmas memories, poems, stories, recipes from bygone years thru to now and delivers an intelligent, engaging and enjoyable mix of christmas spirit.

Great Christmas book.

The Faber Book of Christmas looks at the season from multiple viewpoints. Simon Rae has a clear-eyed view of the more ersatz aspects e.g. 'The Lord of Misrule', page 11, and the darker aspects e.g. 'Keats's Last Christmas', page 283. He does not neglect the religious origins while giving carefully-researched respect to the pagan background. This is in many ways a very personal selection of prose and poetry under numerous headings e.g. 'Carols', 'Entertainments', 'Christmas Legends' , 'Christmas in Captivity', 'Grouses, Gossip and Greetings', etc. There are some favourites here: I never get tired of reading Eliot's Journey of the Magi' in any Christmas compendium. It was also fun to hear how Virginia Woolf spent Christmas: 'we spent 2 hours in the Aquarium'. The book might have benefited from a few illustrations and it has one of the worst book covers (1997 edition) I've encountered on any Christmas book. That said, the actual contents of The Faber Book of Christmas are a delight.

Lovely book. I wish I did not have to hand it over as a gift!

Fast delivery, lovely book and pleased with purchase!

Bought this as bookshelf item to accompany my 'everyday (year?)' copy. Always a joy to dip into!

What a beautiful book. One to treasure and read on cold Advent nights.

I had wanted this book for a couple of years, I decided to treat myself. It arrived in November, I didn't open it until the 1st December, sadly the stories were mostly dull, the best part for me was the lovely Liberty print book cover.