The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

There’s little in the way of comfort and joy in this non-traditional
collection. Both Santa and Christ’s birth take a pass in favour of
social issues and the darker side of human interactions.

The anthology includes 23 stories, the work of 23 authors. It’s an
international collection, with authors from the United States, the
United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Russia, many
European countries, and Canada. Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, and Mavis
Gallant represent Canada. Other star contributors include Truman Capote,
John Cheever, and Graham Greene.

Manguel’s theme for the anthology is that everything repeats. Life is
followed by death, which is followed by life, which is followed by
death. The stories have a Christmas-time setting, which is the end of
the year, symbolically a time of reaching the end, of preparing for the
cycle to repeat. It’s winter before spring, death before rebirth.

The stories are more thought-provoking than entertaining. In most,
Christmas is an unobtrusive background, perhaps a memory of happier
days. Even when Christmas is present, it serves as little more than a
stage for theft, death, alienation, insecurity, worry, confusion, and
fear.

All the stories are high-quality literary exercises, although many feel
stilted as a result of being translated. While not providing feel-good
traditional Christmas fare, the anthology provides lots of solid
year-end reading.