ken scholes — BLOG — ANTHONY R. CARDNO

Top Ten(ish) is exactly what it sounds like: I list of ten or so of my favorite things that have something in common (books by the same author or editor or publisher; music by the same band/performer, etc.). The (ish) allows me to run slightly higher or lower, because exactly 10 is often hard for me to decide. Note: they’re MY favorites, for a variety of reasons not always having to do with quality alone. I’m not saying they are The Best (in fact, I never make that determination, about anything). Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV). Please, don’t yuck my yum and tell me how I’m completely wrong about anything on this list.

Since it’s the night before Christmas, here’s my Top Ten(ish) Christmas books, in no particular order other than #1:

1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: I sincerely doubt anything will ever knock this novel from the top spot. I have re-read it every year for as long as I can remember, one “Stave” (chapter) per night starting on December 21st so that Scrooge awakens a changed man on the morning of December 25th. I also usually watch at least one movie version and listen to at least one audiobook version sometime during the month of December. It’s probably the first novella I ever read (holiday or not), and you’ll notice quite a few novellas on this list. I am typically not a Dickens fan, but you’d never know that based on how much I love this book.

2. Homemade Holidays / Faux Ho Ho by ‘Nathan Burgoine: Speaking of novellas. I was never a real big romance reader, until I started reading ‘Nathan Burgoine. Granted, I started with his more paranormal romance Triad series, but I guess that was the gateway drug. Like the Carol, ‘Nathan’s two (so far) gay romance novellas that take place at Christmas time have become annual re-reads. Homemade Holidays is about a span of years in the life of a young gay writer who was disowned by his family and how he builds new traditions, and a new family, around himself, including finding true love. Faux Ho Ho is a classic “fake relationship” story: the gay son of a rich Conservative family pretends his platonic roommate is his boyfriend to get out of traveling home for Thanksgiving, but then the couple gets invited to his sister’s wedding. Sparks fly, but the truth – and love – will out. (I’d also like to mention that ‘Nathan rewrites a classic Christmas tale through a gay lens every year on his website, and this year’s tale is a take on “Jingle Bells” that is really terrific. I can’t wait until he has enough of these to print a collection.) I wrote a review of Handmade Holidays you can find here and can’t believe I haven’t reviewed Faux Ho Ho yet.

3. State v. Claus by P. Jo Anne Burgh: Sometimes a book just “clicks.” This year, it was State v. Claus, in which Connecticut lawyer Meg Riley finds herself defending a man who claims to be the son of Santa Claus from a home-invasion charge … and finds herself falling in love and learning to believe in the magic of Christmas again. I reviewed it in full earlier this week, but just can’t recommend it enough. Like most of the books on this list, it’s likely to become a frequent, if not annual, reread.

4. A Wish for Wings That Work / Red Ranger Came Calling by Berke Breathed: Anyone who knows my love of the comic strip Bloom County will not be surprised to see either of these books on the list. A Wish for Wings That Work stars Bloom County’s penguin Opus, wishing he could do what other birds could do. Red Ranger Came Calling is another tale of Christmas magic that doesn’t feature any Bloom County characters but is an endearing tale about, again, the magic of belief.

5. How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss: I mean … ‘nuff said, amirite? (Okay … it’s also my favorite Seuss book, the first Christmas book I ever read to my nieces and nephews, and I cannot read it without hearing Boris Karloff in my head.)

6. A Wish to Be A Christmas Tree by Colleen Monroe (illustrated by Michael Glenn Monroe): A tall, aged pine tree grows in the forest, left behind every year as humans come and pick other trees to cut down and take home. The animals of the forest rally to lift the tree’s spirits and show it that it is loved. A simple, yet surprisingly powerful, picture book about loneliness at the holidays and the power of friendship.

7. If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear: Ken Scholes’ novelette looks at a different but still recognizable holiday tradition on a faraway planet, through the eyes of a young woman who has lost her father and lost her hope but who goes through the motions of the holiday traditions because her father would want her to. Along the way, Scholes muses not just on tradition but family expectation, community (the good and less-good aspects) and how hope can be found in the smallest of spaces. I wrote a full review last year around this time.

8. Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis: There are quite a few Christmas/Winter short story collections and anthologies on my shelf. Most of them I have to admit I’ve re-read a story or two out of every so often, but this Connie Willis collection is the only one I’ve read more than once cover-to-cover. The stories are humorous and touching, the characters relatable and familiar. I can’t even attempt to pick a favorite or two out of the eight in the hardcover edition from 1999 that I have. The book has been re-issued with extra stories under the title A Lot Like Christmas. I really should pick the expanded edition up.

9. The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas / A Full House by Madeleine L’Engle: If I were to do a Top Ten(ish) Favorite Authors list, L’Engle would be on it. I loved the Wrinkle in Time books, of course, but I loved the Austin Family series just as much. I wanted to be best friends with Vicky Austin and, if we’re being honest, tween and early-teen me absolutely had a crush on her older brother John. While the main Austin books are YA, these two are illustrated Young Reader books. The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas is narrated by seven-year-old Vicky, who is concerned the holiday will be impacted by the arrival of the newest Austin child, while A Full House is narrated by Mama Austin and centers on a homeless pregnant girl who shows up on their doorstep. Both are moving stories about the power of family, of love, and of community.

10. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg: I tried not to put too many picture books on this list (I have … well, a bunch), but besides The Grinch, this is the one I go back to pretty often, largely because of the beautiful artwork by Van Allsburg.

11. The Book of Christmas (Time-Life Enchanted World series): Over the years, I’ve lost or given away most of the lavish hardcover Time-Life Library books I acquired in high school and shortly thereafter. But there are two volumes from Time-Life’s The Enchanted World series that I’ve never parted with. One is The Fall of Camelot (because hi, Arthurian-obsessed writer here) and the other is this one. The book doesn’t just concentrate on the Birth of Christ and various iterations of Santa Claus, but also includes a look at a number of other Winter holidays, carols, and traditions. In fact, a particular page and illustration in this book inspired my second Christmas novella, which will hopefully be out next year.

12. A Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick: a beautiful photography book about a group of animals encountering a snowy stranger in the woods. Not so much a Christmas story as a tale about winter and the peaceful co-existence of humans and wildlife, it’s every bit as cute as it sounds.

13. A Family for Christmas by Jay Northcote: It’s ‘Nathan Burgoine’s fault that I’m reading so much gay Christmas romance this year. I read this novella for the first time last year and am re-reading it now amidst a veritable avalanche of other gay romance. Another “fake relationship” story with endearing main characters and a happy ending. I am not well-red in the romance field (as I mentioned), but on the strength of this one, Northcote joined Burgoine as a go-to as I explore the field more, and A Family For Christmas joins Burgoine’s novellas on the frequent reread list.

14. DC Super-Star Holiday Special, 1980, by various writers and artists: Yes, it’s a comic book, an anthology title including stories with Batman, Jonah Hex, Sgt. Rock, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and DC’s horror comics hosts of the era. Like the Carol, it’s a book I’ve reread every year since 1980. Still the same copy, with subscription coupons cut out and all. As much as I loved super-hero Christmas stories, you’d think I’d have kept more of them over the years (particularly DC’s tabloid and digest-size Christmas with the Super-Heroes and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer editions, and Marvel’s tabloids as well). I should look into rebuilding that collection. But even if I do, nothing will ever supplant this particular comic in my heart.

Okay, friends: your turn! Hit the comments and tell me what your favorite Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Yule/Ramadan/Solstice/etc. books are – but please do so without denigrating what other people love.

Most of the books mentioned in this post.

a better picture of the DC Holiday Special cover. Smiling Batman! Remember those days?

I may have become slightly obsessed with gay holiday romances, guys.

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

It’s been a few years since I’ve reread Ken Scholes’ “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear.” It was first published on Tor.com as their holiday story for 2011. It’s been newly released this year in a nice slim paperback edition from Fairwood Press, and as it is holiday-related, I thought it might be an appropriate final 2019 entry for Sunday Shorts.

This is the story of Melody Sheffleton-Farrelly (call her “Mel”), coping with the first Dragon’s Mass Eve without her father – which just so happens to also be the day of his death. Mel and her father lived on the outskirts of town, operating a dormant Hope mine. Neither were really believers anymore (Mel possibly never was) in the Santaman or the promise of Dragon’s Mass Eve. But they kept the traditions, minus going to church, going through Mel’s entire life.

The thing that struck me when I first read the story online and which still strikes me reading this print edition, is how well Scholes captures the effect a parent’s death has on the holidays. I lost my mother in 2005 (after spending her final Christmas with her, as Mel does with her father Drumm) and my father two years later, so the first time I read this story I had a few years’ remove from the loss. But I still recognized how Mel acts on that first Dragon’s Mass Eve without Drumm: at first, going through the motions, almost flying on autopilot reciting the Santaman Cycle (as she buries her father), then throwing traditions out as the emotional (and physical) exhaustion hits. A year later, she’s able to observe some of the traditions with fond memories of her father – and she’s also able to do things they never did on the holiday (I won’t spoil what those are here.) Healing from the loss of a parent happens at different speeds for all of us, and Scholes expertly shows that process over the course of the story.

Does it matter that Dragon’s Mass Eve is a holiday the author made up, with only winking nods to recognizable figures and stories? Not at all, because the effect is the same as if he were writing about Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or Yule (or any non-Winter holiday that has adherent family traditions, for that matter). In fact, the effect may be stronger because the story doesn’t become bound up in one’s own experiences of any particular current holiday. We get a strong enough sense of the reason for the holiday and the historical/legendary underpinnings thanks to the sections of the Santaman Cycle interspersed throughout the story. The Cycle itself raises questions about the world Mel, her father, and their neighbors exist in: there’s enough we recognize (“Santaman,” and aspects of various Creation myths) to think this is possibly Earth long after some climate change cataclysm, but enough fantastical (Hope comes from mines; Love is a feral creature) to think it might be a completely fictional, or at the least alternate-Earth, world. Scholes has never weighed in conclusively on which it is, and ultimately it’s not as important a piece of knowledge as it might feel.

Mel has a really strong character arc, starting in grief/death and ending in hope/life. I don’t want to spoil any of the events that lead from the one to the other, so I won’t say much more. Just that the conclusion is satisfying and feels very true to the character we meet in the early pages and the child we meet through her own memories.

This story gives me so much to think about that I’m not sure why I haven’t long since made it a part of my Christmas reading tradition (which includes annual rereads of A Christmas Carol and others). I’ll rectify that going forward. I highly recommend seeking this one out. (I also hadn’t realized that Fairwood Press had started a Novelette Series, of which this is the latest volume. I’ve gone to their site and ordered all of the earlier entries and pre-ordered the next one, coming in 2020. I’ll do my best to do Sunday Shorts entries about all of them.)