Any recommendations of Christmassy books?

[deb21]

Anyone recommend any books to get me in the Christmassy mood? Either adult or childrens.

My 'old favourites' for this are:
Children of Green knowe - lucy m boston
Tailor of Gloucester - Beatrix Potter
Box of Delights - John Masefield

The chapters on Christmas in A Country Child by Alison Uttley are really evocative and memorable

Our favourite children's stories for Christmas are

Christmas on Exeter Street
The Greatest Gift
The Good Little Christmas Tree
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

For me, Christmas also means ghost stories (happy memories of the Christmas Eve scary drama on BBC2), so I'd recommend for adults

Robertson Davies: High Spirits
MR James Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
MM Jacobs The Monkey's Paw
Saki Short Stories
Henry James The Turn of the Screw
Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles

brrrr

A Christmas Carol with Scrooge is a good one.

The Dark is Rising- Susan Cooper
The Country Child- Alison Uttley
A Christmas Carol- Dickens
The chapter in New Treasure Seekers where the Bastables make a Christmas pudding.

The night before Christmas with lovely Christmassy pictures

We have an absolutely beautiful nativity book which uses the text from King James VI bible but with the most fantastic illustrations - lovely ones of Gabriel having a chat with Mary over a cup of tea, of a hugely pregnant Mary lurching onto a donkey and very mischevious looking angels. Just checked it's by Julie Vivas and we got it on Amazon last year.

A Proper Family Christmas by Jane Gordon Cumming is very very funny and Christmassy. A lesson in how to handle ghastly relatives at Christmas.

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. Magic advent calendars, nativity lambs that come to life and the chapters given titles to correspond with the advent calender. A really Christmassy, non commercialised story. An adult book I would say although I think teens would probably get it, the illustrations at least!

For a really sad book by the same author and one of my all-time favourite books: Through A Glass Darkly. On the run up to Christmas an angel visits a dying girl and this follows the conversations they have together - it gets me every time. I bought this must have been about 10 years ago I think, and began reading it one evening - I ended up staying up all night to read the whole thing. It is sad but in no way depressing or maudlin.