American Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis (Editor)

Library of America and Connie Willis present 150 years of diverse, ingenious, and uniquely American Christmas stories

Christmas took on its modern cast in America, and over the last 150 years the most magical time of the year has inspired scores of astonishingly diverse and ingenious stories. Library of America joins with acclaimed author Connie Willis to present a unparalleled collection of American stories about Christmas, literary gems that showcase how the holiday became one of the signature aspects of our culture.

Spanning from the origins of the American tradition of holiday storytelling in the wake of the Civil War to today, this is the biggest and best anthology of American Christmas stories ever assembled. From ghost stories to the genres of crime, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, humor, and horror, stories of Christmas morning, gifts, wise men, nativities, family, commercialism, and dinners from New York to Texas to outer space, this anthology reveals the evolution of Christmas in America--as well as the surprising ways in which it has remained the same.

Genres: Christmas, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Holiday, Fantasy

451 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2021

About the author

Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.

She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).

She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.

Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the future University of Oxford. These pieces include her Hugo Award-winning novels Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and the short story "Fire Watch," found in the short story collection of the same name.

Willis tends to the comedy of manners style of writing. Her protagonists are typically beset by single-minded people pursuing illogical agendas, such as attempting to organize a bell-ringing session in the middle of a deadly epidemic (Doomsday Book), or frustrating efforts to analyze near-death experiences by putting words in the mouths of interviewees (Passage).

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent anthology of five dozen Christmas stories and essays that shows how the celebration of the holiday has changed throughout American history, and also gives a good representation how it's been seen by many non-WASP communities. There's a wide range of genres that includes romance, fantasy, mystery, Western, science fiction, personal reminiscence, humor, tragedy, etc. The earliest story is from 1872 (Bret Harte) and the most recent 2004 (Nalo Hopkinson). The list of authors that are included is amazingly impressive, such as Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Jack London, Stephen Crane, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, O. Henry, Dorothy Parker, W.E.B. DuBois, and just on and on and on. Some of their more familiar works are missing and many of the pieces were new to me, which was great. I didn't like all of the stories but appreciate the historical context and the well-roundedness of the whole. There have been hundreds and hundreds of anthologies of Christmas stories, but this one is surely among the very best. My favorite was (perhaps predictably) Inn by editor Willis from 1993, though I also quite liked ones by Ed McBain, Pete Hamill, and Mary Roberts Rinehart which were new to me, and old favorites by Gene Wolfe, Mildred Clingerman, and an excerpt from Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson.

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first book finished in 2023, just in time for Epiphany! An enjoyable, if overlong, anthology edited by Connie Willis, who I know is a Christmas aficionado. The quality of the paper and book itself is good; this will be a book that lasts.

As with any anthology, especially one that progresses from stories published from 1872–2004, the quality varies, and there's some residual sexism and racism that took a long time to lessen in the stories. (There is an upsetting handful of stories that include a hatred or distrust of a wife by her husband, even a more recent one.)

But I found the gems in this one shone bright. Thurlow's Christmas Story is a classic ghost tale, told cleverly. Edward Lucas White's The Picture Puzzle featured a grieving couple who took solace in working jigsaw puzzles, which I could relate to. "After a two hours' struggle with a fascinating tangle of shapes and colors, we seemed numb to our bereavement and the bitterness of the smart seemed blunted." Morley's Tree That Didn't Get Trimmed is a thoughtful callback to Andersen's classic tale. Langston Hughes'One Christmas Eve and Grace Paley's The Loudest Voice, were delights to read again. Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Butler's Christmas Eve is sentimental but earns it. Raymond E Banks's Christmas Trombone was weird, fantastic and delightful, but the highlight of the book for me was Margaret Clingerman's The Wild Wood, a dark, sensual, otherworldly tale that made me want to seek out more of the author's work, and was ahead of its time in 1957. Mari Sandoz' The Christmas of the Phonograph Records was a hoot. Another sentimental one I thought was earned was Pete Hamill's The Christmas kid, about a Jewish refugee in Brooklyn. Gene Wolfe'e The War Beneath the Tree is a precursor to the Toy Story movies. I also really liked Ron Carlson's The H Street Sledding Record, and the closer of A Young Candy Daughter by Nalo Hopkinson.

This is a good addition to my shelf of Christmas Stories, and I'll forever be glad of the introduction to Margaret Clingerman's work.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's not that I loved every single story in this anthology, but I loved quite a few, and I really loved the breadth and depth that editor Connie Willis compiled.

[Susan]

This is an excellent collection of American Christmas stories, reflecting a diverse selection of authors and perspectives. I read about 1/2 of the stories for the 2021 holidays and plan to read the rest in the next holiday season.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

American Christmas Stories (Library of America) edited by Connie Willis

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This is not a glittering collection of Christmas stories. There are a few that sparkle here, but the collection as a whole is surprisingly disappointing. For example, the O. Henry story is not "The Gift of the Magi," but "A Chaparral Christmas Gift," which is one of Henry's little-known stories. There is a "twist at the end" of that story but it feels labored getting there.

Labored seems to describe a number of stories. Bret Harte's "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar," a story about several poor California miners fighting their way through bad men and elements to get a Christmas gift for a minor's sick son. Most of the early stories, written in the 19th century, are like that.

What redeems the collection is its chronological arrangement. We get to see how the tropes of Christmas develop over time, as well as how the writing style changes and seems to become more accessible. For example, Harte's story added the verb "objurgate" to my vocabulary.

The chronology starts with stories written in 1874 and ends with one written in 2016. With Harte's story, we get a sense of the real poverty that most Americans lived in. In other earlier stories, we have a longing for the antebellum south and home on the plantation. Paul Laurence Dunbar's story from 1900 tells the story of a black woman pining for the plantation past while in an apartment in New York whose Christmas is ruined when her young news seller son is arrested for underage gambling.

It's an interesting slice of history in fictional form, but as a Christmas story, a lot of readers are going to wonder what it means. There is also an unfortunate woke tendency for the editor to select African-American stories (by African Americans or about African Americans) that reinforce the trope of racism and that "Santa Claus is a White Man." In the story of that title, the white man portraying Santa threatens to lynch a black child who has had his last quarter stolen by white children. (John Henrik Clarke 1939) In another story, Santa Claus mocks a black child who wanders into a whites-only department store. ("One Christmas Eve," Langson Hughes 1933.) W.E.B. DuBois offers a parable about how a christ-analogy is born in Africa that ends with "blessed are you, Black Folk, when men make fun of you and mob you...." (The Sermon in the Cradle 1921.)

This is interesting stuff as history and provides a kind of perspective on a strand of the black experience. But is it the total experience? Are there no hopeful and optimistic stories about black people and Christmas? Not that we can tell, although "General Washington" is a kind of race-healing fable about a street urchin in Washington DC. ("General Washington," Pauline E. Hopkins 1900.) Any reader looking for Christmas cheer in the former stories will find a thin gruel.

Similarly, after World War II, we start seeing the Jewish experience of Christmas. Most of these are surprisingly lovely and heart warming. "Mr. Kaplan and the Magi" was an extended joke based on an immigrant's poor English based on author Leo Rosten's experience as an English teacher during the Depression. (Leo Rosten 1937.) Grace Paley's "The Loudest Voice" describes the reaction of Jewish families to their children being dragooned into a Christmas play, with the ending reflecting the pragmatic sense that it was nice of the gentiles to share their beliefs with them. (1959.) Pete Hamill's "The Christmas Kid" was the rate story that brought a tear to my eye as it details the experience of a Jewish child released from the concentration camps with the Catholic community he finds himself in and the lengths they go to rescue him from dire peril. (1979.) Finally, Nathan Englander's "Reb Kingle" is another gem about a Rabbi who supplements his income with an annual stint as Santa Claus. (1979.)

The stories in the last third have an unusual number of science fiction. Ray Bradbury's "The Gift" (1952) is contributed, but not Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star." There is a Gene Wolfe story, "The War Between the Tree" (1979.) It's nice to see Wolfe getting his due. On the other hand, I was disappointed with the Thomas Disch story ("The Santa Claus Compromise" 1974) could have been cute, but I felt the joke was labored. Connie Willis offers her own story - the longest in the book - "Inn" (1993) is nice, involving a very side-tracked Holy Couple winding up at a Methodist church in the 1990s and not at Bethlehem as scheduled.

Of course, we have to recognize the difficulty of diverse people with respect to integration. So, we have Amy Tan's "Fish Cheeks" (1987) and Jose R. Nieto's "Ixchel's Tears." (1995.) These stories are mediocre, at best.

The latter is a bit of a fantasy. There is also a murder mystery - John Collier's "Back for Christmas" (1939) and a spy mystery - Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Butler's Christmas Eve" (1944). The latter was one of my favorites in the book.

Another favorite, which took me by surprise, was "Santa Clo Comes to La Cuchilla by Abelard Diaz Alfaro (1947), which describes the clash of the new and the old in a humorous way that we can entirely imagine.

The contributions by Joan Didion and Dorothy Parker - basically modern women complaining about some aspect of Christmas or their ability to play their role in Christmas - were lackluster. On the other hand, a delight of the book was in becoming acquainted with so many other great writers that are forgotten today: Ben Hecht, James Thurber, Heywood Broun, Christopher Morley, and Damon Runyon. Many of these were mediocre - the Damon Runyon and James Thurber stories being an exception - but I know these names and I'm interested in seeing their other works.

So, in sum, it is strange that you have a collection that is better than its parts. If you come at this for the purpose of putting yourself into Christmas cheer, you will probably be disappointed. If you come at the book to dip into these short stories - and they are quite "dipable," often being less than ten pages in length, and find out if there are any gems you may want to come back to, you may find it worth the investment.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of stories from the last 150 years or so, covering a wide range of genres (including science fiction, westerns, and detective stories) and cultures. Some are humorous, many are very touching, but without any tear-jerking saccharine sentimentality. The African American and immigrant experience at Christmastime is well represented, again without any sugarcoating or pat happy endings. Highly recommended!

[Libby Beyreis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting from a historical perspective, but the stories themselves were kind of a mixed bag. Some good, but a lot that were just OK.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection. Some of these are pretty unspectacular. Some are just wonderful. However, trying to display stories with a common theme from well over a century is not going to create stories that please all ages.



The stories include the following :

“ How Santa Claus Came to Simpson County “ by Bret Harte : From 1872 follows how a motley crew of men in the settlement around the Sacramento River decide they must provide some small measure of Christmas to a sickly young boy living with his parents in an isolated cabin.

In “ Kate’s Choice” by Louisa May Alcott a young woman has come to America to live with her American cousins. Orphaned in England her various sets of cousins families are all eager to have her join them. Given time to meet, stay with each family, in order to make a choice she decides instead to stay with all of these cousins lonely, isolated all but forgotten matriarchal Grandmother.

William Dean Howell wrote “ Christmas Everyday “ in a theme often duplicated about a young girl who thrilled with the excitement of Christmas wishes for the holiday to occur endlessly, each and every day. Over the course of a year the lesson is learned about the advantage of scarcity

“ A Klondike Christmas” was written by Jack London. It is written telling of a barren Christmas in the mining community that is livened up in a bit of a “ Stone Soup “ manner until it is made even greater by the generosity of a rich man traveling through and seeking shelter with them and thus sharing his supplies.

Stephen Crane adds “ A Little Pilgrim “ about a young boy who as the Christmas season approaches switches his allegiance from one Sunday school to another. It seems his original school does not have a holiday party for the children with assorted treats and gifts. His new school is known for their holiday exuberance. When the latter’s minister chooses to renounce the festivities and gift the proceeds to the poor the young boy is forced to give up Sunday school for good

The famed short story writer O Henry has “ A Chaparral Christmas “ included in the collection. A young woman in the southwest has two suitors. The one not chosen becomes a terrible bandit, robbing and killing at will. He desperate for revenge on his rival comes, years later, to their families Christmas festivities as Santa Claus. His plan is to kill the husband but hearing a conversation from his former flame speaking of he himself, that he, she feels, “ must still have some good in him “ he changes his mind. The next day the woman is told her old friend, the bandit was killed on the range by a sheep herder. Strangest thing is the criminal was dressed in a Santa suit.

Margaret Black contributes “ A Christmas Party “ which shows of the tumult in a small church community when they are sent a new minister. Young, handsome, and most importantly single this man, along with his ministrations to a young widow threaten to riven the church.

Ben Hecht wrote “ Holiday Thoughts” This short piece examines in a meaningful way the relationship with toys and the contrast of those feelings between children and their older parents.

“ The toy department is like an almost familiar memory. It seems suddenly preposterous that one was ever a child. And here each toy is like an old scene. Each toy seems crowded with yesterdays.”

Christopher Morley wrote “ The Tree That Didn’t Get Trimmed “ which was delightful. Told from the point of view of a tree that because of a hook in his too does not end up being chosen as a tree. Which is of course his whole purpose. Later the trees not used have all their branches trimmed off and they are sold in bundles to farmers for use as poles for beans, or other plants. They end up having a longer term happiness

In 1939 Edna Ferber, of the book “ Giant “ fame, wrote “ No Room at the Inn. “ Described as taking place on the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany it describes a Jewish family captured by the Jews and giving birth in a field before the soldiers catch up with them. It is remarkably good and thought provoking, coaxing the constant question that never loses truth. Why do you treat the least of you so poorly, did you not read my words about the poor, the sick, the unclothed, the hungry.

Here is something I did not know, Shirley Jackson of The Lottery and other tales of humans certainly at their best, write a couple books based in her experiences raising children. One of them titled “ Raising Demons “ provides a simply delightful excerpt about Christmas in a house filled with young children

In Grace Paley’s “ The Loudest Voice” we follow a little mid century Jewish girl given a starring role in her schools Christmas pageant. This, to her Mother’s chagrin and her Father’s amusement is due to her having a very loud, unabashed speaking voice. This certainly reminded me vividly of my own schools Christmas plays, trees in the classroom. It seems crazy that no one ever questioned it. I guess when you have constantly been in the majority you learn not to even remember the minority exists. I was a shepherd in the 4th grade Christmas play, a nativity scene acted out with a doll for the baby Jesus. Very much like the play described here

Another great story is by Mari Sandoz titled “ The Christmas of the Phonograph Records.” In this we visit Western Nebraska when it was sparsely populated by many immigrant homesteaders. The narrator tells of her childhood when her father decided to order a phonograph. Unbeknownst to his more practical minded record he also purchases a hundred or more records. This was his whole inheritance that he had recently received. But what joy these items brought. She recalls a Christmas season filled with neighbors from miles away stopping in to listen to music, and to also eat them out of house and home as punishment for her Fathers generosity

In “ The Santa Claus Compromise “ by Thomas Disch we see we are in a world where children are given free will to make decisions at a much younger age. Clearly when some young reporters publish that Santa is not real the whole worlds economy is threatened until the President steps in to solve the problem.

Pete Hamill adds the wonderful “ The Christmas Kid. “ Told from the point of view of a streetwise NYC borough kid we see a small time gangster take in a displaced person, a young Jewish boy with a number on his arm. A busybody neighbor causes problems but in the end the boys in that neighborhood will never forget that Christmas

Hard boiled crime fiction writer Ed Mcbain wrote a Christmas piece in his own undeniable way. In “ All Through the House “ a slow night on Christmas Eve at the station is made exciting by a young Immigrant couple brought in for squatting in an abandoned building. She is, as happens on Christmas Eve in these stories, about to give birth.

George V Higgins adds a sweet memory piece called “ The Impossible Snowsuit of Christmas Past.” A man recalls the horrible, heavy, sweaty, snowsuit he often had to wear at Christmas. Especially on Christmas Eve when he and his Father would take a trip into the city by train to “ get out of his Mothers hair “ on this most important of days. His memories of that day with his Father each year show the great importance of tradition. He recalls a special lunch they would have, a visit to Santa and the train store. He writes “ then we got back on the train and went home in the dusk, some years in falling snow, but always with me convinced I had the best father in the world, and Christmas was the best time of the year.”

He writes he has continued these traditions with his own children, now taking a day each Christmas season for each of his children. He finishes “ i’ve learned a lot since my snowsuit days, and dislike much of it, I still know now what I knew then, on those trains home through the snow. And what I knew then was right.

Perhaps the best story in the whole set for me is Ron Carlson’s “ The H Street Sledding Record.” Husband and wife have a tradition of sledding down the hills of the city crossing quiet streets in the dead of the night, tipping sideways if they sight a lone car. When she was pregnant he installed a hand brake for safety. Now their child is eight and he spends Christmas Eve throwing manure on the roof ( from the waiting reindeer ) and then he, his wife, and daughter continue the sledding tradition. Also in this married couples terminology the word “ condition “ substitutes for the word “ desire.” By the end it all makes sense in a wonderfully sweet way.

Connie Wilson writes “ Inn” which uses some obvious metaphors to question the sincerity of some Christians who are putting together the yearly Christmas pageant. The church’s music director is very concerned with keeping the homeless out of the church on this cold, sleety night. When one member of the choir sees a heavily pregnant woman and her husband, speaking a language unheard of by her before we go down the road to fantasy, and it works wonderfully, shining a harsh light on those believers who have forgotten what Jesus actually said in their modern prosperity gospel churches.

The last notable story is “ Reb Kringle “ by Nathan Englander which follows a rabbi who earns extra money by playing Santa Claus each December. He is not happy about this.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good collection. Most of the first stories were just ok but it got better as it advanced chronologically. There's more variety than I expected for a bunch of Christmas stories, and I was really surprised by how many with sci-fi/fantasy elements were included.

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I polished off American Christmas Stories edited by Connie Willis and part of The Library of America Collection. There is something for everyone here, but not exactly the Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury or one you want to sit by the fire and read aloud. There are a few stories in here that would be good, but if you are looking for a sweeping anthology of American short pieces this is it. The book covers the period from the late 19th-century until 2004. Some of the authors include Mark Twain, Jack London, Ed McBain, Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Amy Tan. The emphasis here is stories—fiction and remembrances.

Willis did a fantastic job of bringing in diverse sets of voices while capturing the American melting pot and not candy cane coating it. Despite others who would not want us to include these stories in our history, they are important for us to know and read to gain the full American experience and move forward. There are a couple of stories pulled from Black magazines in the 20th century to remind you that all wasn’t right in America. A particular harrowing story, “Santa Clause is a White Man” by John Henrik Clarke has a young Black boy take his few pennies to town to buy his mother a present and is almost lynched by a Santa and a bunch of white boys. There are also Latino and immigrant experiences in the stories and remembrances of Christmases without.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the very first story, "How Santa Came to Simpson’s Bar" by Bret Harte for the past week. On the surface, it is a heart-warming story about a bunch of roughnecks in the Sierra saving Christmas for a very sick boy. But the author uses the line to describe how sick the boy is, “’Old Man, how’s that yer Johnny getting’ on? Seems to me he did n’t look so peart last time I seed him on the bluff heavin’ rocks at Chinamen. Did n’t seem to take much interest in it.” ‘

Damn. I’d say give the kid some lumps of coal but we know what he’d do with them. It is that one throwaway set of sentences that encapsulates a lot about America. I couldn’t help but think about how I used to live in a neighborhood called China Creek and then later found out it was called that because that is where the Chinese immigrants lived that worked in a local mine, but they were run out and their camp burned down.

The publisher also included a novella from Connie Willis (put in after she finished the editing work). I may have discovered a few more authors I want to read more of, which is really the point of an anthology, right? Mari Sandoz’s story is about her father spending their few family dollars on a phonograph and records is one author I want to read more of. She is a Nebraska author that I had never heard of, but I do love my Great Plains writers, so I will be looking more at work—I may start with her biography of Crazy Horse. With the passing of Joan Didion this week, I realized I have only read her short pieces. There was a story in here by her about the impossible task of meeting the expectations of all the Christmas recipe and craft magazines. This was a reminder to put one of her longer books on my list.

If creepiness is your thing, there is Shirley Jackson and perhaps the creepiest Xmas story I’ve ever read by Mildred Clingerman called “The Wild Wood.” There are also sci-fi stories, stories about alcoholism, cowboys, toys coming alive, you name it. I can see Willis with a chart and checking off boxes to make sure everything was included. The only thing missing is David Sedaris’ piece of “The Santaland Diaries” and I hope that will be included in the next edition.

[Jinjer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read several of the stories in this collection…the super short ones…Tiktok Brain short…, but the one that stood out was Holiday Thoughts .

Why I liked it: It talks about how impossible it is to fight against Christmas. How Christmas tradition doesn’t politely invite participation, it commands it. Even if you are a non-believer, an atheist, or an iconoclast, participation is socially mandatory. The social pressure to put up a tree, give gifts, and attend parties is strong. If you don’t participate, you are called a Scrooge.

Author: Ben Hecht (American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. One of his many uncredited feats was re-writing the entire screenplay for Gone With the Wind in five days. Original screenplay author, Sidney Howard, received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

I also liked the short story written by the Editor, Connie Willis, called The Inn . (Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s and one of her stories is included in the collection.)

[Lori Baxter Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who loves short stories and Christmas, I was excited to find an anthology of tales centered on the holiday. The stories are featured in chronological order, and the structure enhances a fascinating progression of traditions. The editor is a science-fiction writer, and some of her selections are a bit bizarre (such as the story about the musical cone from Venus); I certainly liked some stories much more than others. While the collection is a bit uneven, I found it refreshing that the tales expanded beyond the sentimental dreck Dorothy Parker criticizes in her piece.

The best stories in this book focus on goodhearted cowboys and criminals who, perhaps predictably, undergo a change of heart on Christmas Eve in dark or gritty settings. I usually check out books from my local library on my Kindle, but I am going to buy this anthology in hardback to reread over future Christmas holidays. I hope the publisher eventually releases another holiday collection and that the next edition also includes both esoteric and well-known tales.

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting anthology of Christmas stories that draws from all sorts of perspectives. (Although, I have to say that an awful lot of these stories were New York based. The Midwest was definitely under-represented.)

My favorites from here were "From the Garden of a Friend" by Mary Agnes Tincker, which shows that "re-gifting" was a thing even before World War I.
"Christmas Every Day" by William Dean Howells -- very witty and funny. It makes me want to read more Howells.
"Christmas Afternoon" by Robert Benchley -- a master working in top form.
"The Night Before Christmas by Hemingway" by James Thurber -- very funny.
"Two People He Never Saw" by John McNulty -- very thought-provoking.
"The Santa Claus Compromise" by Thomas M. Disch -- a sarcastic delight
"The Christmas Kid" by Pete Hamill -- touching and funny
"The War Beneath the Tree" by Gene Wolfe -- terrifically anti-sentimental
"Inn" by Connie Willis -- splendidly done
"Ixchel's Tears" by Jose R. Nieto -- very touching.

Overall, a very strong book. Highly recommended.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

You love Dickens' A Christmas Carol but wonder if there are any other stories worth reading to celebrate the season. There are, and some of the best are in Library of America's American Christmas Stories edited by Connie Williams. Written from 1872 to 1997 by authors black, white, and brown; women and men, most are fiction, some are non-fiction, some are science fiction. One of the most fun is Damon Runyon's, his stories inspired Guys and Dolls, The Three Wise Guys. I also loved Connie Willis' Inn which wonders what would happen if the original Christmas family, Joseph and a very pregnant Mary, knocked on the door of a present-day Church on Dec. 23rd during rehearsals for the next day's celebration. It all starts off brilliantly with the editor's overview of how Christmas came to America; the authors and immigrants whose stories and traditions shape our current holidays: "...no one then nor since has ever had a clear idea of what exactly a sugarplum is."

[Jim Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who better to edit a Library of America volume of Christmas stories than Connie Willis, who has written a number of Christmas stories herself. This is a marvelous volume, containing a number of very good stories (as well as, truth be told, a few minor ones, but even those have their charms). There are stories in a number of genres, including mysteries, westerns, science fiction, and fantasy, as well as a number of mainstream stories. Authors include ones I was familiar with, such Mark Twain, Jack London, O. Henry, John Updike, Gene Wolfe, Ed McBain, and Connie Willis herself (with her wonderful story, "Inn"). It also includes stories by writers I was not familiar with, and in some of those cases, ones I'd like to read more by, While most of the stories are upbeat, a few (like John Henrik Clarke's "Santa Claus Is a White Man") are disturbing and haunting.

Recommended.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are arranged chronologically, with the earliest Bret Harte's story from 1872, and the latest Nalo Hopkinson's story from 2004. As editor Connie Willis points out, this collection shows the wide variety of stories, from the funny to the melancholy, including a number of stories of racial animosity and prejudice that still bite today.

This is probably not the kind of collection you want to race through – most of the stories are quite short; there are 59 of them in 438 pages. We decided to read one story a night during Advent. This way, we've got a little over two years worth of Advent reading. That worked out well for us this year, and we look forward to doing it again next year.

[Chris Beach · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stories are in ascending order from old to recent times. Don’t bother reading anything after the Christmas Kid from 1979 . The Christmas Kid is superb by the way . What happened after 1979 you ask . We have gradually destroyed literature with nonsense; like everything else in Academia . Apparently whoever picked these stories sought to prove that . They were successful in that endeavor. If you’re looking for Joy . You won’t find it here . Merry Christmas one and all !

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of varied stories, some dark, some fantasy, some hilarious and some sad. Most of these, I had never read or even heard of; many were searched out from vintage magazines. Connie Willis loves Christmas, and she and the Library of America editors have put together an exceptional anthology of American literature ranging from the seasonally corny to the unexpectedly creepy.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite story in here was “The H Street Sledding Record”. It was quite interesting to see how the timbre of the stories changed through the decades. A good selection from across America, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, these got better as it went along. I was kind of disappointed at first imagining something more along the lines of Connie Willis’ own short stories, but I adjusted. A lot of fairly depressing stories, honestly, but balanced out by the happy ones.

[Randy Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

A disappointment. 59 "stories", but many of them featured no plot or conflict; they were more like vignette. There were a handful of stories I enjoyed, but most of the stories herein don't warrant a second read.

[Karen McQuillen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful and varied collection of stories, some specifically related to Christmas, others with Christmas as a backdrop. I plan to reread (a few, at least) every year. I thought “Christmas Trombone” by Raymond F. Banks (1954) was prescient!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a range of stories, around 60 in all. Not a book for kids or adults expecting 400 pages of diabetes-causing tales, however. Only a small handful might be the types you'd gather the family around the fire to read aloud.

[Chr*s Browning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid collection but a bit too much of a mixed bag to rate higher.

[Kristin Bruno · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the majority of the stories to be quite depressing. For me, this book was not enjoyable.

[Natasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christmas is over. I read enough of this to say I finished it.

[Joe Stinnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pete Hamill one is my fave. Haven’t read all of them though.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan.

[Donna Enos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was not what I expected it to be.

[Elizabeth]

Putting on hold till next Christmas. Have so many other reserves that came in to read. Read about 11 stories so far.