What’s On Your List For Holiday Reading?–

This Christmas Season, As Always, Is One For The Books

By RON BERTHEL Associated Press Writer

‘Tis the season to be ... reading a book?

Perhaps, since there are enough new books with Christmas themes to counterbalance your average holiday fruitcake.

For those who can find reading time between hours spent stringing lights, addressing cards, attending parties, wrapping gifts, setting up the tree, creating holiday goodies, and all those “final” trips to the mall, there are several volumes “yule” want to consider.

When the demands of Christmas present overwhelm, visit Christmas Past (Pelican), Barbara Hallman Kissinger’s exploration into the history of Christmas traditions, including the yule log, wassailing, caroling, and Christmas trees. More than 200 nostalgic color illustrations accompany the text, which includes chapters on the depiction of Santa Claus in America, and Christmas celebrations in several European countries.

Nutty as a fruitcake are some of the entries in Weird Christmas (Black Dog & Leventhal), Joey Green’s illustrated compendium of facts, lists, and anecdotes celebrating the offbeat side of Christmas, with tales of nontraditional traditions, Santas, trees, and festivities. There are Christmas crimes and catastrophes, the worst Christmas movies, and how to say “Merry Christmas” in several languages, from Afghan to Zulu.

While composing your own Christmas list, you might want to check out the 42 other lists found in Christmas’s Most Wanted (Potomac Books). Kevin Cuddihy and Phillip Metcalfe’s paperback offers top ten lists (with detailed explanations) about various aspects of the holiday, including trees, toy fads, TV shows, reindeer, historic events, and even Christmas obits — including the Christmas 1946 death of curmudgeonly comedian W.C. Fields, who claimed to despise the holiday.

Here’s hoping your Christmas is merrier than those in The Worst Noel: Hellish Holiday Tales (HarperCollins). Its 18 true stories about nightmarish Noels include food crises, gifts that would have been better left unopened, and the dilemma of the Christmas card list. Contributors include Ann Patchett, Louis Bayard, Marian Keyes, and Binnie Kirshenbaum and Roger Director, who offer Jewish takes on their Christmas crises.

Tips for avoiding your own “worst Noel” are at hand in Christmas and How To Survive It (Little Books/Trafalgar Square), a bright red pocket-size paperback that’s easy to tote. Author Joseph Connolly points out how to hold off holiday hazards associated with visiting family, sending cards, setting up the tree, attending office parties, and tipping the door-to-door carolers. There are lists of gift suggestions, including what not to get: nose-hair trimmers (for men), supermarket chocolates (for women) and board games, clothes, and anything involving work (for children).

Christmas romance and Christmas fruitcake share the honors in There’s Something About Christmas (Mira), Debbie Macomber’s novel about a fruitcake-hating newspaper reporter assigned to interview three finalists in a fruitcake recipe contest. Along the way, she finds romance with the pilot of the small plane ferrying her around and learns some lessons about life (and fruitcake) from the bakers.

Children help lonely people connect at Christmas in Comfort & Joy (Ballantine), Kristin Hannah’s novel about a woman whose miraculous survival in a plane crash helps her meet a single father and his 8-year-old son; and in The Christmas Hope (St Martin’s Press), Donna VanLiere’s novel in which a couple in a joyless marriage get a new perspective from their Christmas houseguest, a motherless 5-year-old girl.

In The Christmas Quilt (Simon & Schuster), Jennifer Chiaverini’s eighth novel in her “Elm Creek Quilt” series, the discovery of a long-hidden and unfinished family Christmas quilt sparks master quilter Sylvia Bergstrom to reminisce about holidays past.

Small-town pastors produce problems in the novels A Covington Christmas (Pocket Books) by Joan Medlicott, in which townspeople try to repair a church in time for the Christmas Eve nuptials of five couples who recently learned that their long-ago weddings were conducted by an unqualified pastor; and The Christmas Scrapbook (HarperSanFrancisco) by Philip Gulley, in which a pastor arouses suspicion as he disappears every Wednesday night — to secretly attend a class on how to make a special Christmas gift for his wife.

When a couple planning a holiday party become anxious about leaving a name off their invitation list, they decide to play it safe and invite everyone in the world — only to have all 6.3 billion show up — in Every Person on the Plane (Simon & Schuster), with text and cartoon illustrations by Bruce Eric Kaplan.

History and fantasy combine in How Mrs Claus Saved Christmas (Tarcher/Penguin) by Jeff Guinn, in which Layla Nicholas, aka Mrs Santa Claus, describes her role in the 1647 protest of a British law banning Christmas celebrations.

Victorian England is the setting in two Christmas whodunits: A Christmas Guest (Ballantine) by Anne Perry is about a woman who becomes an amateur detective when she suspects foul play in the death of a fellow houseguest; and Mrs Jeffries & the Silent Knight (Berkley Prime Crime) by Emily Brightwell, about a police inspector’s housekeeper who lends a hand in the investigation of the violent murder of a baronet.

Finally, for those who cringe at Christmas, say “humbug’’ to Hanukkah and can’t cope with Kwanzaa, there’s always Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (Warner Books). Allen Salkin offers this handbook for celebrating the “holiday” made famous on TV’s Seinfeld.

Festivus welcomes all celebrants to marvel at the holiday’s symbol (a bare aluminum pole) and participate in its traditional events (competing in feats of strength and airing grievances in the company of loved ones).