FAVORITE SNOW & CHRISTMAS STORIES

These are some of favorite winter and Christmas stories. I read each of them at least every other year, many of them more frequently.

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"Winter of '19"
by Ivan Doig
from Dreamers and Desperadoes: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, edited by Craig Lesley

"Terrible as the winter had been, then, March was going to be worse. Scan the remaining hay twenty times and do its arithmetic every one of those times and the conclusion was ever the same. By the first of March, the hay would be gone. One week from today, the rest of the sheep would begin to starve."

This tale of survival is harrowing. I always feel sick reading it, yet feel compelled to read it every other year or so. Three men—a man, his brother-in-law, and his son—head out in snowy weather to secure hay for their flocks of sheep. A blizzard means that they may not return. Their knowledge of the land may or may not save them. Nature is indifferent to their plight. I know how it ends and I still am on edge the entire time I read it. Doig's short story is masterful.

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"Strawberry Mouth"
by Peter Veerhelst
from Tonguecat

"'Look,' he said, scraping a frost flower off the windowpane. At that same moment he screamed, and with that scream the house came alive. My mother had to use boiling water to separate my brother's finger from the frost flower. A fingerprint of matte, red glass was left on the windowpane."

The first lengthy chapter of this novel, "Strawberry Mouth," is about a world that is suddenly, unexplainedly, locked in ice. The king even bans the word winter from books in an effort to stave off its effects. People are dying from the extreme cold, believing it to be punishment of God or the gods, which it very well may be. The Titan Prometheus comes to this frozen world to bring it fire and relief, but it may be too late. The rebellion is beginning terrorist attacks against the monarchy, its military, its police force, and loyal citizens...

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"The Dead"
by James Joyce
from Dubliners
as collected in The Portable James Joyce

"At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr. Browne came in from the doorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a long green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on his head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from where the sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in."

The celebration of a Christmas party masks the sorrow and loneliness of its characters. The snow is almost a character is in its own right, symbolizing people of the short story in their frozenness and isolation.

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"The Junky's Christmas"
by Williams S. Burroughs
from Interzone

"It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junk-sick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail."

This isn't a pleasant story. In fact, it is rather bleak and drear. But it is ultimately saved by a glimmer of hope at its conclusion. This is only a tale that Burroughs could tell. I also have an audio version of him reading the story in his drab monotone.

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Polar Bear Night
by Lauren Thompson
pictures by Stephen Savage

"The night is keen and cold."

This book is a favorite of the child and I. We read it quite often. A small polar bear cub leaves the comfort and warmth of her den and wanders about at night. She encounters sleeping arctic animals—a walrus, seals, whales. She walks across the snow and ice, beneath the aurora borealis. She returns home to the warm fur of her mother.

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"Christmas Means Giving"
by David Sedaris
from Holidays on Ice

"I knew something was up and, sure enough, two weeks later I came to find the exact same snapshot on the Cottinghams' Christmas card along with the words "Christmas means giving." That had always been our slogan and here he'd stolen it, twisting the message in an attempt to make us appear selfish."

This is a slim book that contains six short stories that are crazy Christmas silliness, satire, or (usually) both. My favorite is "Christmas Means Giving" where a family competes with their neighbors to be the most "generous." It is one of the most lacerating, excoriating, honest critiques of our consumer culture and its attendant violence that I have ever read. It is also a nice counterpoint to the tongue-in-cheek hilarity of the earlier "Santaland Diaries."