Christmas Stories Twelve Poems to Tell and Share By Candlestick Press

We all have our own Christmas stories – things that may have happened years ago and that in the telling and retelling have become part of our festive traditions as much as the school nativity play or Rudolph’s red nose

These entertaining and touching poems encompass all manner of tales. There’s a tipsy step-grandad struggling to carve the turkey, a rediscovered collection of Christmas stamps and a doughty mother leading a troupe of children to cut down a pine tree under cover of dusk:

“I tell my sons these stories in the dark of winter:

our origin myths, borrowed and stolen, a forest

of rootless, ungovernable evergreen trees.”

from ‘Arboreal’ by Linda France

Of course, stories are also where we keep our memories safe, which is why you’ll find moving poems in which times past and departed loved ones are beautifully conjured back into being.