An Irish Christmas: Contemporary Stories & Essays

by Lisa Coen (Editor), Sarah Davis-Goff (Editor), Maggie Armstrong

From Ireland’s foremost independent literary publisher comes an alternative Christmas anthology to happily gift or gratefully receive in the holiday season. This beautiful embossed hardback from Tramp Press features many of Ireland’s most gifted writers, each with their own take on this special time.

When shadows grow longer, when expectation weighs heavy, how do people in Ireland mark Christmas? A woman shops for a very particular Christmas dinner: a man tries to buy a puppy for his daughter: a girl watches as her mother roasts a fowl over an open fire …

From old traditions to the creation of new ones, from moments of quiet reflection to chaos, comedy and even horror, this alternative seasonal collection reflects the stunning breadth of experiences an Irish Christmas offers.

CONTRIBUTORS

Maggie Armstrong, Niall Bourke, Soula Emmanuel, Anne Enright, Briana Fitzsimons, Arja Kajermo, Roisin Kiberd, Mike McCormack, Tim MacGabhann, Belinda McKeon, Sue Rainsford, Jessica Traynor and Sophie White

Genres: Short Stories, Irish Literature, Christmas

220 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2025

Reviews

[Luke Keenan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book that made me so excited to spend Christmas with my family. Some stories made me laugh, some made me sad and others had me shocked.

Great book to finish the year off with

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There are no Christmas trees at the orgy. But they're everywhere else: standing in the living room of a New York apartment, against the wall of a doctor's office, and in a mansion's vast entrance hall. Christmas trees bear witness to this story, appearing in the background from the start until the final scene”. So writes Roisin Kiberd in an essay on the film Eyes Wide Shut, one of the few non-fiction entries in the new Tramp Press anthology An Alternative Irish Christmas, though the essay is no less compelling than the exquisite cornucopia of fiction on offer here. I loved Jessica Traynor’s wry tale about a hapless father trying to get a dog for his despondent daughter for Christmas, ‘Careless People’, and the equally wry but more tender and optimistic ‘Christmas Number One’ by Soula Emmanuel, which explores one trans person’s grappling with familial obligation over the holidays. Belinda McKeon’s ‘December Twenty-Third’ is another dreadfully exquisite, darkly hilarious familial tale that briefly, gloriously, resembles a Twilight Zone holiday special, and Mike McCormack also offers up some festive disorientation in the dystopian sci-fi-ish ‘Adeste Fideles’. There’s a deeply moving scene of domesticity, care and desire in Maggie Armstrong’s ‘Little Christmas’, and a sort of portrait-through-conversation that unfolds in ‘Swans’, in which Tim MacGabhann writes one of the finest final paragraphs for a short story since Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, a beautiful, awful, sprawling thing. Two of my favourites (among, evidently, so many standouts) were Sue Rainsford’s ‘Feast of Sparrows’, a story of sensuality and animality that unfolds with such an arresting sense of dread, and Sophie White’s absolute riot ‘We Need To Talk About Christmas’, another family-focused story that takes such a genius, hilarious, yikes-inducing turn it had me and my jaw both on the floor. Along with four other excellent pieces, these stories and the essay make for a suitably “alternative” festive reading experience — I recommend planning ahead and getting this early for someone you love for Christmas 2026.

[Laura Gibbons · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing

[Aimée-Stephanie Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag story wise but all so beautifully written.

[Mathijs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much a mixed bag.

The writers seem more concerned with the ‘short’ than with the ‘story’ of these short stories.

Writing styles are all very good though