Books to Love: Idyllic Christmas Reads
We each of us have our idea of what an idyllic Christmas looks like. For me, I vacillate between two ideas: the cozy, snowy Victorian Christmas and the cozy, snowy Western Christmas. I suppose we can blame the snowy portion of my Christmas ideal on Irving Berlin and his holiday classic, White Christmas. The cozy part is self-explanatory.
Now, the Victorian makes sense to most people. After all, many Christmas classics are Victorian: A Christmas Carol, Little Women, etc. Indeed, many of our holiday traditions were birthed during the Victoria era.
The Western… well, it’s in my blood, and blood will out. The West is where my family roots are firmly planted. Perhaps it harkens back to when I read through the Little House on the Prairie series. Who knows. Maybe I’ve been reading too much C.J. Box and Craig Johnson. Or watching too much Longmire and Yellowstone. My heart finds a true resting place in the American West. And, coated with snow, in a cabin, in the stark beauty of nature, that spells an idyllic Christmas for me.
Today I am sharing two Christmas reads with you, dear readers, that live up to my ideal for Christmas. So, if you’re looking for a great companion book for the season, these may just be for you.
A Holiday by Gaslight ~ Mimi Matthews
Victorian England is made for Christmas stories. It simply embodies the spirit of Christmas perfect with red and green foil cards and ribbon bedecked trees.
Mimi Matthews published this Christmas novella in 2018 and it’s a perfect read for the holiday.
Sophie is a dutiful daughter caught between a rock and a hard place. Her father, who is fully obsessed with the legacy he will leave when he dies, has squandered her dowry in order to outfit his palatial country seat with gaslight. At twenty-three, this leaves Sophie with limited prospects on the marriage mart.
Enter Edward Sharpe. He’s a self-made man which is a huge societal faux pas in Victorian England. Certainly, he’s rich as Croesus, but his humble beginnings as the son of a draper will simply close more doors in affluent society than it will open.
But, needs must when the devil drives. After meeting Sophie at Cremone Gardens at Mrs. Ashburnham’s dinner, Ned approaches her father and asks to court her. When her father gives him his blessing, Ned high tails it to the nearest book store and buys a book: The Gentle’s Guide to Etiquette.
Never before has he ever wanted to court a woman, but Sophie has beguiled him. And he doesn’t want to mess it up by betraying his lack of breeding. So, he relies completely on this etiquette book to guide him through.
Unfortunately, this is the wrong thing to do. When the novella opens, Sophie finds herself explaining to Ned that after two months of courting, she is ending their relationship because they have nothing in common.
What she doesn’t know is that Edward Sharpe is besotted with her. In true fashion for the time, when Sophie tells Ned that she believes they should no longer keep company because they have nothing in common, he does the gentlemanly thing: he defers to her judgement and politely dismisses himself from her life. Then he returns to his business where he places the ornate and expensive engagement ring he’s purchased for her in his desk drawer and tries to forget her.
After this first chapter, you know A Holiday by Gaslight has all the ingredients for a wonderful read. Of course, their parting is short-lived and Sophie finds herself at Ned’s place of business with a proposal of her own.
You will find tones of North and South as Mr. Edward Sharpe channels Elizabeth Gaskell’s John Thornton. Dear readers, he’s that tall, dark, handsome, quiet type who drives you wild in all his subtle, noble ways. (If you’ve not seen the miniseries starring Richard Armitage, then hasten to do so. It is oh, so worthy of a watch!)
In many ways, Sophie channels Gaskell’s Margaret Hale, too. She’s intelligent. She’s dutiful. She’s respectful of her parents. And she shoulders the burden of all her family’s woes with little complaint. These very things are the aspects of her character that draw Ned Sharpe to her in the first place.
Throw in a slightly selfish yet endearing younger sister for Sophie and a scapegrace but charming business partner for Ned and you have a sweet aside, too, that provides just the right amount of drama for our would-be lovers.
A Holiday by Gaslight has it all. A country house party, snow covered countryside, sleigh rides in the moonlight with the Christmas star shining above, ornately described Victorian gowns that show off to great advantage in gaslight, and a tender, heartfelt love story that will leave you smiling in the end.
A Creed Country Christmas ~ Linda Lael Miller
Stories where incomplete, broken, hurting families are made whole are some of the best to read during Christmas. It harkens back to that scripture in Psalms about God placing the solitary in families.
In many ways, this is the premise of A Creed Country Christmas. Prior to this short novel, I had never read anything by Linda Lael Miller. However, I was at the library with a hankering for a Western based novel that took place around Christmas. Sad to say, I chose this book solely based upon the cover- which is quite beautiful.
I’m happy to day, though, that the story found between the covers is the perfect Christmas confection.
The story begins with a hopeless woman grasping at her last chance in the form of a letter. A letter from her brother. Julianna Mitchel is the newly unemployed teacher from the Indian School in Stillwater, Montana. Snow is falling heavily. With her four young charges in tow, she enters Willand’s Mercantile. While the shopkeep eyes the four Indian children with her suspiciously, he hands over a letter that has come for her. It is the reply she has both hoped for and dreaded: a letter from her brother, Clay.
When Julianna had learned that the Indian School was closing, she knew that her four young charges had no place to go. Just like her. However, strong willed and independent, she formulated a plan. Unfortunately, her planned needed money. And while she did indeed come from great wealth, because of certain personal choices she has made in her life, her brother, who holds the reigns on her funds, has been withholding them in order to force her into a corner to do his bidding. He wanted her to marry as certain man in whom Julianna has no interest, and until she kowtows, he’s holding her money hostage.
Julianna had hoped that relaying hers and her charges’ plight would soften Clay’s heart. Alas, it did not. He’s still trying to strong arm her.
There in Willand’s Mercantile, Julianna is in despair. What is she to do? If it were only herself, she could manage, but she has the children, one as young as four. They depend on her. They need her to come up with a solution. But there is nothing.
Julianna is not one given to despair. Nor do tears come easily to her. Yet, in this most despondent moment, she is close to tears and feeling a terrible grip of despair. She looks up from the letter and is startled to find a man, tall and dark, standing directly in from of her. While the look on his handsome face may be one of concern, he also wears a slightly forbidding expression, too.
“Are you all right, miss?”
In a moment of stark, desperate honest, Julianna Mitchell tells Lincoln Creed, owner of the largest cattle ranch in Montana, precisely what her situation is. There will be no train for a week. There is no money for the hotel in Stillwater Springs. The children are cold and have little food. And a blizzard is brewing.
In that moment, widower Lincoln Creed, who went into town with a desperation of his own- hoping for a letter in reply to an advertisement he placed offering a position for a governess for his young daughter, Gracie. Well, there was no letter for him, but there was a woman uniquely qualified for the position.
Largess being in his heart, swayed by the huddled children with their meager possession, he tells Julianna and the four children to get in the back of his wagon and taken them home to his cabin.
And so begins the story.
A Creed Country Christmas is a tale of generosity. During the season of Christmas, a celebration of the most generous gift the world has ever been given, I enjoy stories that echo that generosity. Furthermore, given that Jesus’ whole purpose for coming to the world was remove the sin impediment that separated us from the Father, reading this story about how insurmountable impediments are removed one by one in order to create the perfect family is a beautiful reminder of why this season is the greatest season in the whole year.
A Creed Country Christmas is a story of love and family set to a gorgeous backdrop of snowy covered mountains. There are even lowing cattle to put us in remembrance of that first Christmas way back when in Bethlehem.
I don’t know if you theme your reading to the season. I don’t ordinarily. However, there is something about the consuming nature of the Christmas season that makes it trickle into every aspect of our lives.
The songwriting duo Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaberty wrote in their song All Those Christmas Cliches:
I want those overblown, corny, heartwarming, hallmark Christmas cliches
These two books provide firm foundations where those very Christmas cliches can be found. You will get the overblown in A Holiday by Gaslight. The corny you’ll find in A Creed Country Christmas. Both are heartwarming and touch Hallmarky (just the right amount as too much just ruins it all).
With less than ten days to Christmas, I wish you the true festivity of this Season, and, most of all, Happy Reading!
