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Hello booklovers,

In today’s festive blog offering the bringer of comfort and joy is author Esther Rutter. Esther shares with us a beautiful family treasure which will certainly bring much magic to many Christmases to come and serves as a reminder of the simple joys of the season.

My source of ‘Comfort and Joy’ is a small red sock which we hang up each December. Sewn from an old red blanket and hand-stitched with stars, it is my little daughter’s Christmas stocking. We’ve only had it for a couple of years – she’s just a toddler – but I’ve already become very attached to it, and unwrapping it from its tissue paper nest after a year of exile in the attic always feels extra special.

As a child I loved the excitement of opening stockings – though mine was always one of Dad’s thick woolly socks, stretched into strange knobbles as it struggled to contain a bounty of oranges, chocolate coins, and little presents. Opening stockings always came first on Christmas morning – no need to wait until dawn flooded the windows, or the adults dragged themselves from bed. Christmas began with that bundle of just-for-me joy.

This stocking was by Ericka Eckles, a sensitive and skilled seamstress and knitter who decided to make my daughter a trio of beautiful woollen gifts to celebrate her birth – and the birth of my first book This Golden Fleece (2019). Though I’ve only met Ericka once, I think of her as a ‘sister-in-wool’: we are both Suffolk born and bred, and share a love of knitting, baking, and books. As my daughter pulls out her presents from her stocking this year, I’ll tell her about the woman who made this just for her, and hope that next year they might be able to meet in person for the first time.

Happy Christmas!

Esther x

Esther Rutter is a non fiction writer and writer in residence at the University of St Andrews. Her first book, This Golden Fleece, was published last year. Esther grew up on a sheep farm in Suffolk and has woven a love of all things woolly into her fascinating work.

Hello booklovers,

We have a festive treat in store for you this weekend. Helen Bott of Treasure Chest Books, a magnificent second hand book shop in the heart of Felixstowe, shares with us the book that brings her comfort and joy at Christmas.

When I mentioned the book I was thinking about for this blog at the family dinner table, there were howls of derision. ‘That’s not a Christmas book’ and ‘Of course you’d choose that book’ amongst other comments. But the opening line of the  book in question is ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’ and the title of the second chapter is  ‘Merry Christmas’. I rest my case

The book is, of course, Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’, my favourite childhood book. I loved reading and rereading about the lives of the March sisters and have welcomed the chance to reread it again almost 50 years later. My 1970s paperback copy is just about holding together. There was so much I didn’t understand at the time. What was this war which had taken father away? What was a poplin dress? Why did they eat muffins for breakfast? What was a russet apple? But so much else made sense especially the relationships between the sisters. And their experience of Christmas still rings true. With hindsight the sanctimonious, proselytising tone can grate a little (my own daughter refused to read it when she was young) but the opening chapters are still a wonderful, warming Christmas read.

The sisters know that there isn’t enough money for lots of presents this year, they all have a dollar to spend and would like books, music, drawing pencils but decide to spend their money on gifts for Marmee. In return they receive matching religious tracts which they plan to read every day. I loved the description of these books, all different colours, how that appealed to my 10 year old’s love of all things matching, I’m not sure I would have wanted such a gift myself. Then they decide to take their Christmas Day breakfast to a poor starving family, competing with Dickens here and of course their kindness is rewarded when old Mr Laurence sends a Christmas tea of ice cream, cake and ‘French bonbons’ (I never did understand why the tea included toffees covered in icing sugar…)

The best and funniest section is the description of the play the sisters put on for Marmee and other friends in which the scenery collapses, Meg wanders around looking beautiful, Jo overacts and Amy refuses to throw herself into the role of romantic heroine, ‘her ‘Ow’ was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish’. As a child who used to dragoon her younger siblings into performing a play for parents and grandparents, I felt Jo’s pain.

So if you want a change from Tiny Tim and his turkey, dig out your old copy of ‘Little Women.’ Look past the nineteenth century moralising, Meg does actually say ‘That’s loving our neighbour better than ourselves and I like it’ and there’s a very human description of a family celebrating Christmas. You can almost feel the heat from the blazing fire and taste the treats sent by Mr Laurence. Now I’m going to reread the whole book and ‘Good Wives’ too.

Happy Christmas!

Helen

Hello booklovers,

Today author Louise Millar brings us comfort and joy by sharing precious memories of Elvis’ crooning tunes as the soundtrack to her family Christmases past and present. Warning: a festive tear may well be brought to your eye…

Elvis Presley runs a fine thread through my family story. I don’t remember a time, as a child, when his music wasn’t playing in our car, on the way to the shops, or on holiday, or home to Glasgow at Christmas, the four of us singing along to Wooden Heart, making up the German lines: ‘Moosy den, moosy den…’

In our own house at Christmas, Elvis’ comforting croon was accompanied by the smell of smoke from the fire and my father’s cigar, laughter rising, as family and friends arrived. My dad and uncles’ competitive story-telling starting up at lunch, becoming sillier and funnier, the day ending with dancing in the sitting-room, and a late-night singalong.

But Elvis was not just for Christmas in our family. He had famously instilled an exuberant new spirit in my parents’ post-war 1950s generation. They just loved him. In the 1970s, on a business trip to California, they decided, after a party, to peek over the wall of his mansion, my mum teetering on my dad’s shoulders. Was the shadowy figure who emerged to chase them away a security guard or, in fact, Elvis? As kids, we decided Elvis, of course.

Their love of him transferred to me. Decades later, I would drive across Mississippi interviewing people whose lives had been changed by their state’s famous son. The highlight was meeting Reverend Frank Smith, who’d taught young Elvis his first guitar chords. That story became my first published newspaper article, and the start of my journey as a professional writer.

Today, Elvis still says ‘home’ to me. I still play his music at Christmas. And when I do, I think fondly of my father, cigar and brandy in hand, mischievous smile as he told another silly story, never happier, I now realise, than with all of us on Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas,

Louise x

Louise Millar is a crime writer and the author of four acclaimed psychological thrillers. Her work focuses largely on the darker layers of the domestic sphere.

Louise was also a journalist and senior editor for Marie Claire and her travel writing has featured in The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Observer.

Alongside her writing, Louise is a founding member of two writing groups, and co-founder of Killer Women, a professional collective of twenty-one female crime authors created to amplify and support women’s voices in crime writing. She is co-founder of the annual Killer Women crime writing festival in London, and publisher of the multi-award-nominated Killer Women anthology.

Hello booklovers,

Advent is well and truly underway – I hope you all had a good weekend. Today’s Comfort and Joy instalment will certainly get your week off to a good start. We are delighted to welcome Nick Holland to our blog, as he shares what brings him comfort and joy at Christmastime with a wonderful literary twist…

Christmas is a time for loved ones and loved things, and for all the comfort and joy that familiarity brings, so at this time of year I like to re-read my very favourite novel: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It was first published, alongside her beloved sister Anne Brontë’s debut novel Agnes Grey, in 1847 and has captivated readers worldwide ever since.

Wuthering Heights is a book that has everything but at its heart is a tale of thwarted love, and a desperate lifelong act of revenge. Its wintery opening make it a perfect Advent read, and is also contains a Christmas scene which tells us much about how the Brontë family themselves spent Christmas Day in Haworth Parsonage. The Earnshaws and Lintons are enjoying a Christmas party, replete with drinks, feasting and a visit from the local brass band, although Catherine’s mind is on an absent party: Heathcliff, who has been banished after bashing his love rival Edgar Linton with a tureen of apple sauce.

In this we can see a reflection of a Brontë Christmas – hopefully without the tureen on head incident. Christmas day itself would have been a joyous one for the Brontës; beginning with a Christmas service at their father’s church, they would then settle down to a festive meal and doubtless the Haworth Brass Band would have called at the parsonage too.

Contrary to the perception of some, the Brontë sisters loved fun and laughter, and they especially loved music, so we can easily imagine them gathered round the parsonage piano. We know that Emily was a brilliant pianist, indeed she briefly gave piano lessons in Brussels, and that Anne Brontë liked to sing along in a voice described as ‘soft, yet sweet’. Perhaps Anne had this in mind in the opening lines to her poem, ‘Music On Christmas Morning’:

“Music I love – but never strain

Could kindle raptures so divine,

So grief assuage, so conquer pain,

And rouse this pensive heart of mine –

As that we hear on Christmas morn,

                                                                   Upon the wintry breezes born.”

This year has been a strange one and this Christmas will find many of us separated from those we love and want to be with, but better times are rapidly approaching and until then we can find solace and escape in great books such as Wuthering Heights.

Happy Christmas and may God bless us, every one!

Nick x

Brontë expert Nick Holland is the author of Crave the Rose: Anne Brontë at 200. Throughout this excellent biography Nick examines the life of one of the most overlooked members of an astounding literary trio. A fitting celebration of Anne’s 200th birthday, Nick delves deep into the somewhat unknown life of a woman who was extremely talented in her own right.

Hello booklovers,

Next up in our Comfort and Joy series, author Sophie Green spreads some cheer and tells us about what makes her feel Christmassy…

For me, the festive holiday is conjured up by warm and delicious smells – citrus and spices, mulled wine, cinnamon and marzipan, represented here by a clove an orange pomander – I make a few of these a couple of weeks into December and they fill the house with good cheer and mix deliciously with the pine scent of the tree.

Merry Christmas!

Sophie x

Hello booklovers,

Our first instalment of our 2020 Christmas blog series is suitably bookish and comes from our Festival Director, the lovely Meg Reid.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without some new books waiting to be explored. My children and now grandchildren know to expect at least one book in their present pile.

I even have a treasured Christmas tree decoration which is a book, a tiny Santa shaped edition of “The Night Before Christmas”. I have no idea where I got it but it has hung on our tree every Christmas for years.

Another book which has been with me forever is “Christmas At Timothy’s” given to me by my mother when I was a baby. Turning the pages takes me back to childhood. It’s a story about a girl who goes to stay with her cousins at Christmas time. The children go to the market in the fog to choose a Christmas tree, they make paper chains, roast chestnuts and have a happy old fashioned time!

“The Snowman” is a family favourite. As well as reading the story all the pianists in my family know they must  play “Walking in the Air” when they visit. I’m chuffed that, despite Covid stopping the piano lessons I started last year, I’ve just discovered that I can now make a reasonable attempt at playing myself!

Of course there is a pile of Christmas books ready to read to the granddaughters (now via Facetime) My favourites are “The Jolly Christmas Postman” and “Mog’s Christmas” but there are plenty of others to choose from including a recent addition “Little Bear’s Christmas” about a little bear who sets an alarm clock to wake himself up from hibernation to try to see Father Christmas. (He does of course)

I hope you get lots of books for Christmas and if you are buying them as presents please do use our wonderful indie bookshops.

Meg x