We all have our own festive traditions, and for many of us, one such ritual is sitting down with the same Christmas books year after year. This might be a classic Christmas Eve story that we remember from our childhood, a cosy crime book (the ending of which is no longer a surprise), or an absorbing, thrilling tale that helps to fill those often empty days between Christmas and New Year. It’s always interesting, and often inspiring, to hear what others like to read all year round, and the festive season is no exception. With this in mind, we wanted to share our go-to Christmas books so that you can add a few new titles to your library this year.
Virginia Clark, digital director
Not strictly a Christmas book, but every year in the Twixtmas period or in early January I read The Secret Garden. It is the loveliest children’s book, all about a little girl who exists in a sort of perpetual winter state, displeased with everyone and everything, but eventually finds spring via the secret garden in her new home, and the people and animals who inhabit it. It’s just right for the bleak post-festive period. At Christmas itself, I’m always deep in a mystery. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is a favourite, and features the loathed patriarch of a dysfunctional family getting slaughtered just as he’s plotting fresh mischief for his relatives. If you’re having a slightly fraught family Christmas, you can always take comfort in knowing it’s not that bad.
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Arabella Bowes, commerce editor
Whilst it is a little more bleak and melancholy than the other books in the Moomintroll series, I find myself returning to Moominland Midwinter time and time again. Moomintroll, the main character, wakes up too early from his family’s hibernation and ventures out into the snow alone. He has never seen snow before, or experienced the cold, and finds himself confused, bewildered and a little frightened. The adventure is essentially his coming-of-age story and the cast of characters he meets along the way are just as delightful as he is. Yes, it is ostensibly a book for children, and it’s not particularly cheering, but there is something so haunting about the sense of loneliness and sorrow it captures that it is imprinted on my mind at this time of year. It really does encapsulate those odd early January days so well.
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Julia Faiers, sub editor
I’ve read The Night Before Christmas to my kids every Christmas Eve since they were tiny. They’re adults now (just), and they still love it. It has such an evocative opening line: ‘’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.’ I especially love the pop-up elements in the Robert Sabuda version of the book.
Christabel Chubb, acting deputy digital director
Two books immediately spring to mind at this time of year. The first, suitably, opens with the line ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’. It is, of course, Little Women. Set in New England in the mid-19th century, the book follows four sisters as each grows into womanhood. Christmas is used in the novel to reflect the passing of time, and as it passes, we share in the sisters’ experiences of love, loss and heartache. It is best enjoyed while curled up in an armchair on a cold winter’s night. For me, the second most comforting book at this time of year is Harry Potter. Which volume you choose is up to you, though I’ll be reaching for book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, as for me it is the one most packed with drama, comedy, intrigue and tantalising plot. Everyone loves a bit of Harry Potter, and at this time of year, what more could you want than to spend a little time in the fantastical world of magicians, butterbeer and Albus Dumbledore?
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Eva Farrington, senior designer
The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth is a great non-fiction book to hunker down with at Christmas, as it feels like you’re improving your mind while being hugely entertained by the lives of characters from history, and the stories of how they shaped what a book is. Another favourite of mine is Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto. Set in 1950s Japan, it tells the story of a double murder along with quite a lot of detail about food, travel and train schedules. Which I’m aware doesn’t sound particularly cosy or thrilling, but I promise you that it is. It’s a classic!
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Rose Washbourn, digital writer and books editor
I’ve loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books since my mother first read them to me as a small child. In fact, I’m so fond of the novels – which chart the joys and hardships of life on the frontier, based on Laura’s own life – that I have to limit myself to a few readings each year. Christmas is the one time that I allow myself to revisit all my favourite books in the series, particularly the festive chapters. Often, these are almost too touching for words. The one that always comes to mind is in the titular book Little House on the Prairie, in which the family’s neighbour Mr Edwards braves a blizzard and swims a frozen creek to fetch presents for Laura and her siblings from the nearest town (as the weather is too bad for Santa Claus to reach them). When they open their stockings in the morning, they find a new tin cup, a stick of peppermint candy, a small sugar cake and a ‘shining bright, new penny’. And then come the words that will leave me gently sobbing beside the Christmas tree, vowing never again to take a gift for granted: ‘They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny. Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Think of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy and a penny.’ If that isn’t the true meaning of Christmas, I don’t know what is.
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Tilly Wheeler, commerce writer
One of my favourite things to do in the winter months, when the weather takes a turn for the worse, is to get lost for a couple of hours watching a film at the cinema. A book that celebrates the meaning that film can give to life is Jeremy Cooper’s Brian, housed in one of indie publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions’ instantly recognisable royal blue jackets. A slim, quiet and understated novel, it is set in London, starting in the 1980s, and centres around the solitary, routine-driven character of the title, who finds a new lease of life after falling in love with cinema at the BFI Southbank. With countless films referenced that Brian goes to see in the story, the book also serves as a great watchlist to work through.
Eleanor Codlin, managing editor
Clichéd but iconic, Bridget Jones’s Diary is the book I like to revisit every few years during the festive season. It’s an easy and heartwarming read, and the storyline neatly spans from one New Year to the following Christmas. Although some of the references feel a little outdated (starting each diary entry noting one’s exact weight, thankfully, feels pretty counterintuitive in 2025), Bridget’s likability endures. And, besides, in that funny little period after Christmas when time seems to stop, it is nice to remind yourself what a difference a year can make.
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Pratyush Sarup, director of content strategy
In The Bear and The Nightingale, Katherine Arden weaves a world full of winter wonder and mystery in Medieval Russia. Coming to terms with her growing magical powers, a young girl is caught in the eternal tension between the old and the new. Katherine’s poetic style brings a snowy landscape – complete with fur-clad men, horse-drawn carriages gliding over frozen lakes and mystical spirits roaming free – to life. Borrowing heavily from Slavic mythology, this is not your typical Christmas story, but in creating a winter tale that leaps out of the pages, she delivers a story that’s both heartwarming and escapist.
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A Poem for Every Night of the Year is another brilliantly seasonal read and a great Christmas gift bound in one, Allie Esiri has put together a collection of 366 poems – each assigned a date and an introductory paragraph. Between its covers, Maya Angelou rubs shoulders with Shakespeare and Ted Hughes. Christmas Eve is marked by Clement Clark Moore’s A Visit from St Nicholas and Robert Burns rings in the new year with Auld Lang Syne. Read aloud in a merry room or in the silence of the night, this book will keep you company all year long. And then it has to be A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings. First published in 1843, A Christmas Carol is perhaps Charles Dickens’ most enduring work, and the story – how miserly Ebenezer Scrooge lost and rediscovered compassion – has been adapted for countless film and stage outings. Both the theme of the story and the wintery setting have pretty much painted the picture of Christmas for generations.
Rémy Mishon, decoration editor
I’m a nostalgic reader at the best of times, so at Christmas I double down on my guilty habits. Nancy Mitford’s Christmas Pudding is an old favourite involving her Bright Young Things escaping London for a Cotswold Christmas. I also love a ghost story – EF Benson’s collections are brilliant, often involving clairvoyants, ghosts and monsters set in the early 20th century. They’re a perfect mix of Victorian-style gothic fiction meeting the wit of his Mapp and Lucia series.
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I’m also a fan of having a Christmassy audiobook playing as I bake, cook and busy myself. Last year, the dramatisation of Little Women was fittingly the soundtrack of my domestic activities. Laura Dern leads the cast and it was like having a gaggle of wonderful women in the kitchen with me. A Christmas Carol narrated by Hugh Grant is an indulgent use of a credit as it’s less than three-hours long, but it’s the Christmas collaboration we all need and whoever made the decision to marry the two needs a promotion.
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I know it’s non-fiction, but I find Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles on my nightstand year after year. More of an ode to the season than a cookbook, with recipes peppered between stories and notes, it’s become one of my most comforting Christmas rituals. Even if I only get round to making a couple of the recipes, it always instills a sense of presence in this chaotic time of the year.
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Aida Amoako, acting features writer
Not the most jolly or festive, but Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is, to me, a great winter read to return to again and again at this darkest, moodiest time of year. The very second word of the book is snow! It’s a campus novel and whodunit set in the 1980s featuring a group of Classics students at a liberal arts college in Vermont, whose dangerous obsession with intellectualising everything and testing moral boundaries has fatal consequences for one of them. It’s utterly engrossing and I always look forward to being transported from my cosy sofa in London to wintry New England with this modern classic.
