Suggest me some Little-known Gems With Christmas in them

The Christmas book threads here at Reddit do not give it the variety it deserves. Then too, there are divisions in readers here, some religious, some secular, some seeking anti-secular or anti-religious (or anti-Christmas and anti-festive altogether). Some are literary, some are basic.

Christmas Fun: Generally all these readers will like the anthology of CHRISMAS AT THE NEW YORKER. which aims at adults. Something for all.

I also have long loved Willis's MIRACLE AND OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES which was expanded into her volume entitled A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS.

Connie Willis is well known, with those two collections and a number of novels with Christmas in the background, but the single most sumptuous book I can recommend for all is her AMERICAN CHRISTMAS STORIES collection. If you are just going to get one Christmas book or anthology, this is the one to get.

That Christmas collection includes James Thurber's parody of Hemingway, to the tune of the classic verse, A VISIT FROM SAINT NICHOLAS, Thomas Disch's THE SANTA CLAUS COMPROMISE, Pete Hamill's THE CHRISTMAS KID, Gene Wolfe's THE WAR BENEATH THE TREE, George V. Higgin's THE IMPOSSIBLE SNOWSUIT OF CHRISTMAS PAST, Shirley Jackson's RAISING DEMONS, Langston Hughes; ONE CHIRSTMAS EVE, Damon Runyon's THE THREE WISE GUYS, selections from Mark Twain, Jack London, Ed McBain, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Crain, O. Henry, Ray Bradbury, Mari Sandoz, Joan Didion, Amy Tan, and many, many more.

It includes Ben Hecht's marvelous essay, HOLIDAY THOUGHTS, from the year 1921, which nails for all time the feelings of adults buying toys for their kids. A timeless gift that rings true, for better and for worse.

I've always loved Christmas nostalgia, like the movie A CHRISMAS STORY which is based upon Jean Shepherd's funny and wider memoir, IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH. Good reads in a similar vein include Kevin Jakubowski's 8-BIT CHRISTMAS, Wally Lamb's WISHIN' AND HOPIN', Kay Thompson's ELOISE AT CHRISTMASTIME, and of course such now popular classics as HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS and THE POLAR EXPRESS (which has its darker interpretations). Then too, I laughed at the early part of Dave Barry's THE SHEPHERD, THE ANGEL, AND WALTER, THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE DOG.

My favorite in this vein, not mentioned above, is Alan Bradley's I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS, a Christmas story featuring an eleven-year-old girl with adult semiotic connections to Shakespeare, Dante, and other classics. I might yet post my interpretation of this somewhere. Yet the surface story is gentle enough for YA and Christmas.

(Alan Bradley, by the way, is also the author of THE SHOEBOX BIBLE, a story which includes many Bible verses and themes, and it is very good.)

Over the years, several people here recommend Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER, which I also like in my own deep interpretation, but you should know that Death replaces Santa Claus in that novel, a Biblical reference from Matthew 8:28-34 that Cormac McCarthy features in OUTER DARK, and something detailed in Sanborn's book, ANIMALS IN THE FICTION OF CORMAC MCCARTHY.

J.K. Rowling, the creator of Hogwarts, also has a Christmas book entitled THE CHRISTMAS PIG, in which a child whose parents are going through divorce, clings to a toy pig as a kind of false security blanket, and the book is about the child learning to let go of material attachments and accept loss as a part of life. Upbeat, I'd say.

And one of my favorites is also Kinky Friedman's THE CHRISTMAS PIG. A departure from Friedman's other comic works, a gifted deaf child in this novel is commissioned to paint a Nativity Scene but he does so including a pig. which is thought at first to be a sacrilege. It is later revealed to be instead a blessing and a wonder, in a positive upbeat story.

Having trouble connecting the Christmas sleigh to the Christmas manger? I recommend CHRISTMAS: PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE, edited by Scott C. Lowe. This book offers all sides to the Christmas controversies, the Christian, the secular Santa, as well as that of the nihilist naysayers.

You'll enjoy it much more than that other, more negatively comic volume, THE DREADED FEAST: WRITERS ON ENDURING THE HOLIDAYS. Selections here are from Jonathan Ames, Dave Barry, Robert Benchley, Charles Bukowski, Augusten Burroughs, Billy Collins, Greg Kotis, Lewis Lapham, Jay McInerney, Fiona Maazel, George Plimpton, David Rakoff, David Sedaris, Charles Simic, Hunter S. Thompson, James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, and John Waters.

Cormac McCarthy's first three novels were his id-dominated novels; the Border Trilogy were his heroic, ego stage; and he had planned an abstract superego stage, which he kicked off with his Beckett-like novel/play, THE SUNSET LIMITED in which two men argue spirituality vs. acedia. Acedia can strike at any time, but if you are feeling depressed at this time of year, you should read Kathleen Norris's ACEDIA AND ME.

You might alternately enjoy Gene Doucette's YULETIDE IMMORTAL, in which an everyman tertium quid named Adam argues with Santa Claus over the same arguments in McCarthy's THE SUNSET LIMITED, glass half-full or not, and in any case, shouldn't we all be grateful?

As Cormac McCarthy told Oprah.

I enjoyed a few stories in Otto Penzler's anthology, CHRISTMAS CRIMES AT THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP, notably Laura Lippman's comic "SNOWFLAKE TIME," a riff on political correctness, and Loren Estleman's "WOLFE TRAP," a parody of Rex Stout. And I like Stout's own book, TANGLED UP IN TINSEL.

Those seeking to see the light in the darkness of our literature might also enjoy Andrew Klaven's THE KINGDOM OF CAIN, or Spencer A. Klaven's LIGHT OF THE MIND, LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

A Literary Christmas Read? I loved Richard Barre's story entitled BETHANY, which I found included in his anthology, CHRISTMAS STORIES IN THE TRADITION OF ROD SERLING'S THE TWILIGHT ZONE. It's a trucker on a snowy road that encounters a mysterious woman, and it is very well done.

I enjoyed George C. Chesbro's SECOND HORSEMAN OUT OF EDEN, but of course it is not for everyone. The second horse out of Eden was the red horse, for which Cormac McCarthy's horse ridden by John Grady Cole was named, perhaps. Redbo being the second recursive loop, the second stage of McCarthy's cycle and thus more evolutionarily evolved than the id stage. Anyway, this is the first paragraph of Chesbro's Christmas detective novel:

"Santa Claus was long overdue, and if I didn't hear sleigh bells in another hour I was going to start calling the hospitals. Santa couldn't be drunk, because my brother no longer drank."

In a similar vein, I enjoyed Simon Green's ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE ROAD, a Christmas tale that makes fun of the cliches yet plays into them in a lightful and unexpected way. Off a bit, humorous, yet solid and ultimately cheerful.

And of course, I stand by those I've recommended in earlier years, Craig Johnson's CHRISTMAS IN ABSAROKA COUNTRY, Martha Grimes' JERUSALEM INN, JACK SAVES CHRISTMAS (from the anthology A KENTUCKY CHRISTMAS), among many others, and each year I reread some of my favorite Christmas scenes from otherwise non-Christmas novels–such as in Lawrence Block's A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF and Joanne Harris's gem, GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS, which I see overall as a delightful academic novel in metaphor.

We love the Hallmark Channel, but some movies are better than others. We'll watch THE NINE LIVES OF CHRISTMAS again and again. ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS. LOVE ACTUALLY. There was a time that I liked THE REF and THE ICE HARVEST, but I cannot get into them these days.

Love both horses and Christmas? I like Natalie Keller Reinert's books, particularly CLAIMING CHRISTMAS. She is in the Christmas anthology, DECK THE STALLS, but I have not read it yet.

Love book collecting and Paris? John Baxter, who wrote one of my very favorite books on books, A POUND OF PAPER, has a Christmas memoir out entitled A PARIS CHRISTMAS: IMMOVABLE FEAST. I've read it and love it too. Both of his books here named have been on sale at Amazon lately (2.99), but that might have been for Black Friday sales. They are worth the full price anyway in this reader's opinion.

Know some others? Let's hear about them. Christmas is a-coming.