The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin

After finishing both Maggie Rose, Her Birthday Christmas and Little Women last week, I wanted something short and Christmas-y to read to my girls at night.  I’ve had Classics For Christmastime – Five Novels About the Spirit of the Holiday for years–decades, even–and have never actually read anything from it.  It contains

• The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry van Dyke
• The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin
• Brotherly House by Grace Richmond
• The Romance of a Christmas Card by Kate Douglas Wiggin and
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Of all these, I chose The Birds’ Christmas Carol because I’ve seen it recommended on various lists.  Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for Kate Douglas Wiggin, having enjoyed her Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm as a child (numerous times!) and also The Romance of a Christmas Card, which I re-read just a few years ago.  

Reading The Birds’ Christmas Carol on the heels of Maggie Rose, Her Birthday Christmas was perhaps a wee bit unfortunate, for I think Carol Bird might have suffered in comparison to Maggie Rose Bunker.  This short novella seemed a little on the saccharine side in comparison, with Carol Bird being the sickly youngest child and only daughter of doting parents.  Like Maggie Rose, Carol has a Christmas birthday.  However, unlike Maggie Rose, she’s perfect, as children go:  her one desire is to give a large neighboring family of many children a Christmas they’ll never forget.  She does this, as one might expect, in a completely selfless and moving way, and then she succumbs to her sad but expected end.  The book is pretty predictable and yes, cloying, but I did find a lot of humor in the neighbor family’s preparations for going to the Birds’ house for the Christmas festivities.   We enjoyed this story, and I would recommend it, but just be aware that it requires a certain tolerance for stories with sweet and saintly main characters who personify this definition by Mark Twain:

Heroine: Girl who is perfectly charming to live with, in a book.

It’s worth a few nights’ reading, and we’ll likely revisit it when the boys are old enough.  However, it is mostly a Christmas confection that leaves one’s literary palate in need of cleansing by characters who aren’t quite so perfect.  (1888)

Other Christmas chapter books we’ve read:

• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
• The Family Under the Bridge by Nancy Savage Carlson
• The Light at Tern Rock by Julia L. Sauer
• Maggie Rose, Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer
• The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton
• The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L’Engle