What happens in a Christmas story? Some are about the first Christmas, telling the story of the birth of Jesus from a range of perspectives. Some use Christmas as a time of great change - like the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens'' A Christmas Carol, perhaps the most-remembered Christmas narrative outside of the nativity. Perhaps everyone reading this Introduction will have their own stories of Christmas that are passed down through the years and the generations - the time that a gift was hilariously inappropriate, the meal that went disastrously wrong, the first Christmas in a new home, a new relationship, or with a new baby. Authors have turned to Christmas as a theme for a story for centuries - whether a momentous Christmas where everything changes, or the documenting of an annual tradition so customary that it feels immovable, bringing either reassurance or claustrophobia. Some of the most respected writers of short stories have used Christmas as a creative spark; equally it has inspired the work of writers whose names have never been widely known, and who never aimed at literary greatness. Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season collects a wide range of creative work by women writing across the twentieth century. It is published as part of the British Library Women Writers series, which brings back and contextualises forgotten or less- remembered novels by female authors, highlighting the realities of women''s lives and society''s changing attitudes toward female behaviour throughout the decades of that century. Some of the authors in this anthology (such as Alice Munro and Muriel Spark) are highly regarded and award-winning writers; some are remembered for particular books, but the wider scope of their work has faded from public consciousness.
The majority of their stories have been sourced in the British Library collections. We have searched through published collections of stories, delving also into Christmas editions of old magazines. A few of these stories have never been republished since their first appearance in a festive periodical. They sit side by side with much more renowned authors, each giving their own perspective on Christmas. This anthology is loosely ordered chronologically - not by year of original publication, but by the days of the Christmas period. From early preparations to festivities, on to the pantomime season and ending with a New Year''s resolution, these stories take you through the highs, lows and traditions of the festive season. The anthology opens with ''Turkey Season'' (1982) by the Canadian writer and Nobel-prizewinner Alice Munro (1931-). It''s an early reminder that Christmas isn''t all twinkly lights and beautiful ribbons - because it''s told from the perspective of a 14-year-old ''turkey gutter'' at the Turkey Barn.
Or, rather, an older woman reminiscing over being that girl. All I could see when I closed my eyes, the first few nights after working there, was turkeys. I saw them hanging upside down, plucked and stiffened, pale and cold, with the heads and necks limp, the eyes and nostrils clotted with dark blood; the remaining bits of feathers--those dark and bloody too-- seemed to form a crown. I saw them not with aversion but with a sense of endless work to be done. Munro has long been one of the world''s most respected short-story writers, and you can see why in ''Turkey Season''. It''s a portrait of a curious community - people who wouldn''t otherwise come together, sharing their lives and keeping their secrets. It''s about memory, and the way that it can shift and change over time, never quite landing on certainty. And it shows a side of Christmas that most of us are protected from.
Moving from Canada to Ireland, Maeve Binchy (1939-2012) shows another ''sense of endless work to be done'' - but this time in the home. In ''This Year It Will be Different'', Ethel is a wife and mother who stages a protest against the festive labour that her family expects she will do alone. She didn''t do anything dramatic. She didn''t do anything at all. She bought no tree, she mended no fairy lights, she sent six cards to people who really needed cards. The story is from the 1990s, but could voice the experience of countless women from any period. Reflections of ordinary life, often in small-town Ireland, run through Binchy''s seventeen novels, as well as her short stories and other work. Her debut, Light a Penny Candle (1982), sold for the then-largest sum ever paid for a first novel, and remains one of her most popular.
If one isn''t on strike, like Ethel, then preparations tend to include Christmas shopping. In a collection of observational sketches called General Impressions (1933), E.M. Delafield (1890- 1943) included ''General Impressions of a Christmas Shopping Centre''. Though almost a century old, the same dilemmas endure of deciding what to buy for an eccentric uncle, trying to distract fractious children with Santa Claus, and hunting for a gift you know you''ve seen but can remember nothing about. This sketch first appeared in the feminist periodical Time and Tide, as did much of Delafield''s writing - including her most famous work, Diary of a Provincial Lady and its sequels. Her novel Tension (1920) appears in the British Library Women Writers series; like ''General Impressions of a Christmas Shopping Centre'' and almost everything Delafield wrote, it plays with the idea of self- awareness (and lack of it) and how we might appear to others. When the shopping is done - or, more likely, in the middle of it - you might find yourself attending a children''s Christmas play, pageant or concert.
In ''The Christmas Pageant'' (1968), by American writer Barbara Robinson (1927-2013), the ''worst children in the world'' disrupt a nativity play with their questions and confusion - but end up shining more light on the holy story - ix -Th Th Th than anyone expects. Three years after the story appeared in Woman''s Home Journal, Robinson adapted it into the bestselling children''s book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, also published as The Worst Kids in the World in the UK. Meanwhile, in Audrey Burton''s ''Ticket for a Carol Concert'' (1950), everybody has an excuse not to attend the village concert, although they all agree to buy tickets. Burton''s story was published in The Lady magazine and includes some interesting contextual details. The aptly named Mr Sage can''t envisage going to the concert: ''"Christmas carols in the year 1950! But just look at the world! Look at it! Look at Korea!"'' In every generation, singing about peace on earth can feel like a clash with reality. For some, Christmas is the perfect time for romance. ''Snow'' (1928) by Olive Wadsley (1889-1959) is representative of many stories appearing in women''s magazines throughout the twentieth century, and indeed today. There is something comforting about the sudden, headlong infatuation between two young people - simultaneously improbable and inevitable.
It helps one agree with the heroine, Viola, that ''"Christmas is the loveliest time in all the year"''. Wadsley''s romantic novels met a wider audience in six adaptations for silent films between 1918 and 1924. If the couple stays together, they might form the sort of family traditions seen in Kate Nivison''s ''''Twas the Night Before Christmas'', originally published in Woman''s Weekly in December 1989. Nivison''s story shows a happily married couple, with an undercurrent of intergenerational comparison between mothers and daughters - and a mouse that is definitely ''stirring''. A sudden romance is also at the heart of ''Christmas Fugue'' by Muriel Spark (1918-2006), though a rather less conventional one. Cynthia is spending Christmas Day in the air, travelling from Australia to England and thereby artificially extending the day as the hours pass and the time difference catches up. ''"Nobody flies on Christmas day [.] It will be amusing," said the pretty hostess.
"We''ll make it fun."'' Like much of Spark''s writing, the reader and the character don''t quite know where they are - leaving them disoriented. Spark''s twenty-two novels enjoyed critical acclaim, with three shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and she is widely regarded as one of the finest writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Her most famous and enduring work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, is about an unorthodox teacher in Spark''s native Edinburgh. Spark spent relatively little of her life in Scotland, moving between Zimbabwe, London and New York before settling in Italy for the final decades of her life. Miss Harting, in ''The Little Christmas Tree'' by Stella Gibbons (1902-1989), intends to spend Christmas Day alone. She isn''t stinting on Christmas food, Christmas decorations and a Christmas tree - even though, in this rural community, ''unmarried females did not buy Christmas trees, decorate them and gloat over them in solitude, however natural such a proceeding might seem in Chelsea''. Some unexpected guests arrive, of course, and the story takes a pleasing turn - though not without ironical touches that devotees of Gibbons'' most famous work, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), would recognise.
''The Little Christmas Tree'' is the opening story from Gibbons'' 1940 collection Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and other stories; she would return to the farm again in 1949''s Conference at Cold Comfort Farm. Tree in place, it''s time to start giving and receiving gifts. The titular present in Richmal Crompton''s (1890-1969) ''The Christmas Present'' (1922) is an heirloom passed down generations, though an unconventional one. The story shows the wit that Crompton is best remembered for in her stories about William Brown, perpetually aged 11 while appearing in stories published from 1919 to 1970. William and his mischievous, entrepreneurial friends wreak well-meaning havoc on relatives, visitors and domestic staff - particularly any showing signs of pomposity. Alongside.