Season’s Readings

You must’ve noticed it. We’ve not even had Halloween yet, and already the supermarkets are full of Christmas food - family size tins of Quality Street and mince pies. 

But it’s not just the supermarkets that are getting in the festive spirit months in advance. Readers (and writers) are too. October is a massive month for Christmas books, although I have seen some cover reveals and releases as early as September. There’s been a veritable avalanche of snowy book covers, wintery (but far from bleak) landscapes full of quaint cottages, all smoky chimneys and fairy light covered fir trees in the garden. My own Christmas cosy crime (because nothing says ‘Ho ho ho’ like a good old fashioned murder) isn’t out until the end of November, but it’s already on Amazon, where preorders are flying off the virtual shelves.

I have to confess that until I became a writer, I wasn’t even really aware that ‘holiday’ books were a thing. It wasn’t until my writer friends started releasing their own seasonal stories, and I started hanging around in online book clubs, that I saw how popular they are. So what’s the appeal?

I suppose for me, it’s a way to regain the excitement and magic of Christmas that I used to feel as a child. I no longer believe in the big guy at the North Pole, so stories about elves and red nosed reindeers aren’t going to cut it for me. But stories about finding true love under the mistletoe; about spending the holiday in a snowy village, warming hands on mugs of steaming hot chocolate and hearts on steaming hot men… Count me in! Christmas and New Year are all about new beginnings, and these books are, too. New lives, and new loves.

Christmas - in the Northern hemisphere, anyway - is all about getting cosy. It’s about curling up in front of the fire, a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine close to hand, and whiling away the long winter nights with a good book. It’s about holding back the darkness of midwinter, not just with fairy lights and candles, but with the warm glow that you only get from a good story. Some might call that a guilty pleasure, but I firmly believe that no one should ever feel guilty about something they enjoy, especially not at Christmas. Christmas IS pleasure (or should be).

It’s not just Christmas, of course. There’s always a slew of Halloween books every October, but I’d argue that they’re really more just supernatural/paranormal/horror stories, rather than specifically about the haunted holiday; unlike Christmas stories, which could ONLY take place at Christmas, a lot of Halloween books could probably be transposed to other, less traditionally spooky times of the year, without the story suffering.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Christmas books? If so, when do you start reading them - and just as important, when do you stop? Can you still have Christmas in February or March? Or are you more ‘bah humbug!’ when it comes to festive reading?