Tidings: The Absolutely True Story of Christmas

by D.J. O'Toole

Joseph has been captured by soldiers. A pregnant Mary is being hunted by the king. She needs to escape Nazareth but doesn’t know how. Three hard-drinking strangers claim they can help, but she isn’t sure she can trust them. Oh, and let’s not forget that the baby-daddy is God, The God, The Great ‘I Am’. She’s had better days.

Herod The Great has been king of Judaea for thirty years. He is losing his sanity to a disease. He learns shepherds are being visited by angels, bringing tidings of comfort and joy. What the hell are tidings? Herod has no intention of being displaced by some newborn King of the Jews. He sends his soldiers after whoever started these rumors… and after pregnant women, just in case.

Mary is on the run with the Wise Men, a group of arrogant, dipsomaniac consultants. She isn’t sure her captured husband is even alive. A shepherd boy is leading the team to Bethlehem. Gabriel, the Herald of God, won’t speak. Herod has given the kill order. And God says He is going to let it all play out…

The most rewarding path is never the easy one.

298 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2021

About the author

DJ O’Toole was born in Philadelphia and grew up in northern Indiana. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue University and has lived in Indianapolis ever since.

He spent over 20 years toiling in the mines of the engineering community before discovering his love of writing. Surrounded by math geeks and scientists, DJ did his best to fit in and not let his creativity show. Nothing alarms the engineering community like creativity. They fear change and anything with a curve.

His short stories have won awards from Writer’s Digest Magazine and the Midwest Writers Workshop.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tidings is an creative and hilarious re-imagining of the Christmas story told in modern language (including a healthy dose of profanity). Imagine the humor of Mel Brooks applied to the story of the birth of Jesus, and that’s what you have here—and it’s wonderful. I agree with the author that it’s possible to tell this story with humor (and a near-Tarantino number of F-bombs) and still be respectful. In that way I view Tidings to be in the same vein as The Righteous Gemstones—there’s a lot of humor to be gleaned from religion, but the sincere religious faith at the story’s core is never, ever the butt of the joke.

I took a Bible as Literature class in undergrad, and our teacher started the first day of class by declaring that “the Bible is f***ing cool!” A few people dropped the class after that, but those of us who were left were in for quite a treat in studying the universal, timeless stories of the New and Old Testaments (and apocrypha) for their literary merit, regardless of the teacher’s or students’ religious beliefs. Tidings embodies my teacher’s opening declaration from that class—this is a cool story, and it’s told in a very cool way here.

Re: the audiobook—as I wrote in my review of The Pole Vault Championship this summer, while I’m sure reading Tidings in hard copy/Kindle format is great, the Audible edition takes this book to another level. The narrator is beyond talented, effortlessly performing dozens of distinct voices and accents for the characters. Even the most minor, unnamed characters get their own voices, and I don’t think any of them are ever repeated. (I should have kept count…) It’s astonishing, given that it’s a single actor performing all of these roles.

All that is to say, Tidings (what the hell are tidings, anyway?) was a very fun addition to my holiday season this year.

[Meg Dunk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tidings puts a new twist on an old story, the birth of Jesus. O'Toole weaves reference with profanity, history with imagination. The creative retelling involves intrigue, lunacy, murder, romance - all elements of a captivating story. I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining book. I may not have picked it up had I not won it in a Goodreads Giveaway - I'm so glad I did.