Christmas books to read on Christmas day 🎄

Inspired by my Christmas movies recommendation list, I've decided to create a recommendation for Christmas books this year. The list isn't nearly as long as the other one since I started to read more books recently, but I added my favourites and essential books. As I read more books I plan to make more posts every year (in the same way as the songs).

1# The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (1902)

I remember watching a animated movie with this name as a kid I really liked the movie as a kid because I didn't know that the story was about Santa Claus, it started with a middle ages setting and a bunch with magical creatures living in a forest, then someone abandoned a baby in the forest and a fairy adopted it as her kid. I think that I either didn't know the movie title before watching it or I did and thought that it made no sense because4 there was nothing about Santa in the story lol. So naturally, I was charmed when it showed that the baby turned out to be Santa.

Then, everything is adapted from a book! At that time as a kid, and until last year when I read it, I didn't know that the movie was adapted from a book. And to be fair, the book is way better than the animated movie, the story is really like a "slice of life" of Santa Claus growing up, Santa is friends with everyone, everyone loves him, everything goes fine and his life and even the villains are a minor thing that is soon resolved. Plus it's short and can be read in one day.

2# The Night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore (1823)

Actually a short poem, this book is one of the oldest ones about Santa (at least in my reading list). It is a classic, and was adapted into a lot of different songs(in just reading the poem and singing it). You can read for free in the poetry foundation but I'd recommend to read along this song adaptation that is my favourite so far.

3# Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May (1939)

Another book that I first knew as a animated movie. The movie was broadcasted every year in Cartoon Network's Christmas special, I loved it and watched every time they showed it on TV (I even got devastated when CN stopped broadcasting it lol). The story was first published as a booklet for Montgomery Ward department store and 2.4 million copies were distributed in the first year of publication (according to goodreads) and it also received plenty of adaptions, this song by Perry Como is one of my favourites.

4# Miracle on 34th Street by Valentine Davies (1947)

Contrary to the other books in this list, this book was actually adapted from the movie. I already mentioned the book on my post of Christmas movies last year, and I can say that the there is almost no difference in the story between the two. The plus of the book is that it's short and there is a lot of slangs and terms of the 40s (which I think interesting). And though I liked a bit more of the movie than the book, the book is still worth reading for enjoying the movie story in a different format.

5# A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)

I'm repeating myself a lot here LOL but again, I first met this story watching an animated adaptation as a kid and at that time I had no idea how famous and common sense this story was. Fast forward to a few years ago, I decided to make a Christmas tradition to watch a adaptation of the carol each Christmas Eve, but different to the first book in this list, it was until two years ago that I actually read the book. Comparing to the other books in this list, I think that I didn't like it as much but I still recognize it's importance to Christmas as whole, which I can explain in the next item of this list.

6# The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford (2008)

This book is a different from the others in the list because it's a biography about the author Charles Dickens, and it isn't that it's a huge title that competes with modern isekai light novels. It starts explaining a bit of Dicken's childhood, how he grew up to be a famous actor at his time, how he got in a financial crisis that gave him the idea of writing A Christmas Carol, how he got more famous after publishing the book (that doesn't even compare in how famous he is it's book alone, and how famous the story is today) and his life after writing it, until his death.

This book isn't exactly a Christmas book, also it isn't short to read in a day, but I really liked how it was written, how it explains Dicken's story and tidbits in how Christmas was in that time, and I think that if you like the holidays and reads it you'll like it too (a weak argument but if you read it you'll understand I promise lol)