Frankincense, Gold, and Myrrh: A Christmas Chrestomathy

For over thirty years, Joseph Bottum has been writing widely acclaimed Christmas essays, columns, short stories, and carols for American magazines and newspapers. Now, for the first time, St. Augustines Press has gathered a selection of these classic pieceswith a vast range across the Christmas spectrum. 

Theres the comic: Tinsel. No one needs tinsel. Even the word is a tinselly kind of word. Theres the sentimental: Her hair was the same thin shade of gray as the weather-beaten pickets of the fence around her frozen garden. Theres the reminiscent: Christmas was books, and books Christmas, in those days now mostly washed down to the cold sea. Along the way, theres the theological, the learned, the mystical, and the musical.

Tastefulness is just small-mindedness pretending to be art, he writes in praise of mad and cluttered holidays. Christmas will not be defined by our failures to apply its lessons and carols, he explains about Yuletide poetry. To see these essays and short stories gathered in one placein a beautiful illustrated edition from St. Augustines Pressis to see the whole of the vision that Joseph Bottum has been painting for decades: a picture of Christmas as a thin place in the wall between the natural and the numinous, where a burning grace slips into a cold winter world. See more