Here—after last Thursday’s—is our second special edition of The Culture full of wintery, Christmassy cultural recommendations for the days and weeks ahead. This was going to be the end of it, but—conscientious little elves that they are—Prospect’s family members, friends and contributors have sent in so many suggestions that there will be a third edition next week, on Boxing Day. Enjoy.
The Christmas Book
What does Christmas mean for me? Is it a time for family? A chance to get together and show our loved ones we care? No. What makes Christmas so exciting for me—a nonreligious person—is that it’s such a vibe. Say what you want about the commercialisation of Christmas. No one can deny that its contemporary iconography—pine trees, Santa hats, reindeers, elves, snowmen, angels, tinsel, baubles, crackers, etc.—doesn’t conjure a heady, cosy sort of nostalgia. And perhaps one of the best books documenting this unique visual history—and one that’ll certainly get you into the seasonal vibe shift—is Phaidon’s The Christmas Book. There’s a long-running joke that there’s a Phaidon book for virtually everything and, well, this book will do absolutely nothing to dispel that. But at the end of Christmas Day, when you’ve watched Die Hard twice already and are too comfortably exhausted to do anything but sit on your sofa wearing a stupid paper hat, it might be just the kind of reading material you need.
David McAllister, production & associate editor
Bell, Book and Candle
I bet you, like me, absolutely adore that old Christmas film with Jimmy Stewart. No, not that one. I’m talking about Bell, Book and Candle, of course, released on 25th December 1958 and featuring everything you—well, I—could want in a festive movie: Christmas, witchcraft and beatniks. Stewart plays New York publishing exec Shep Henderson, opposite Kim Novak’s icy blonde Gillian (with a hard “G”) Holroyd, who runs the African art gallery downstairs from his apartment and also happens to be a fully fledged witch. It was the second time Stewart and Novak teamed up that year, the first of course being in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s all rather a dark and morally ambiguous affair; we’re meant to root for Gillian, who’s set her cap at Shep, but he’s due to marry his fiancée on Christmas Day. She utilises some nefarious witchcraft to snare him, helped by her wacky aunt Queenie—none other than the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester—and her brother Nicky (a clearly-enjoying-himself Jack Lemmon) who plays a mean bongo in the underground beat clubs of Greenwich. Bell, Book and Candle is criminally underappreciated as a Christmas movie and rarely gets the airplay it deserves.
David Barnett, critic
On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
With its strident iambic pentameter and its evocation of an Advent countdown, John Milton’s 1629 Christmas poem opens like a comforting Anglican hymn: “This is the month, and this the happy morn”. What follows is a darker ode than anything you’ll sing in Midnight Mass. Milton is one of a long tradition of authors, from the Pseudo-Plutarch to Neil Gaiman, to explore the concept that the coming of Christ directly resulted in the death of the Greek god Pan and the collapse of a pagan divine order. Over the course of 31 formally experimental stanzas, Milton vividly recalls a world of Greek gods, only to destroy them with the birth of a child.
Kate Maltby, theatre critic
The Hard Nut
The Hard Nut, Mark Morris’s version of The Nutcracker, is on at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until 22nd December. I’d go if I could; you should go if you can, simply because it’s the most beautiful and moving version of ETA Hoffman’s story and Tchaikovsky’s music that you’re likely ever to witness. Once upon a time, I flew out to Brussels just to see the premiere. It’s still etched on the inside of my skull. You can take your children to The Hard Nut, but it comes with an advisory warning: it’s not children’s entertainment. The dreams it calls up have moments of memorable weirdness, such as Princess Pirlipat and the red-eyed rats. For adults who have looked up at a Christmas tree, or are in love or remember what it’s like to be in love, however, this is the show you want to see at Christmas. There you are, moving diagonally across the stage together, every step light and precise, woven into the music, and the whole world is there, party guests, flowers, snowflakes, national dress, all conspiring in your love and wishing you joy.
Alice Goodman, Lives columnist
Arthur Christmas
In our house, Christmas wouldn’t begin without Arthur Christmas (2011), an Aardmann animation about Arthur, Father Christmas’s younger son who endeavours to ensure that Christmas isn’t ruined for a particular child—and in general. It’s heartwarming, fun and a great way to kick off the festivities. Voiced by some great British actors, including James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie and Bill Nighy.
Tracey Syrett, marketing manager
The books of Jon Fosse
Two Christmases ago I finished Norwegian novelist Jon Fosse’s Septology, published over three volumes that work meticulously towards a conclusion on Christmas Day. Fosse’s minimalist literary style—sentences that circle themselves obsessively, no full stops—can incite invective, but nobody writes about memory, disorientation and… re-misremembering… like him. Last year, The Shining was published in the aftermath of Fosse’s Nobel Prize, a mere 48 pages against Septology’s 700, over which Fosse’s narrator loses himself in an icy forest, the purpose and destination of his journey suddenly unclear. This year, I’ll be reading Fosse’s newly published Morning and Evening, not a specific winter setting this time—but, in my house, nothing says Christmas like Jon Fosse.
Philip Clark, critic
The Fall’s ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’
The greatest version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” I know is The Fall’s Peel Session cover, first broadcast in December 1994. Over rattling drums, a loping bassline and choppy guitar, Mark E Smith rasps out the words of Charles Wesley pretty straight, relishing their weird inversions (“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see”) and adding one Smithesque twist: “Risen with, uh… healings, / In his multifarious wings.” Brix Smith’s falsetto chorus vocals could shatter glass.
Jeremy Noel-Tod, critic
The Shining
Ah, winter: season of running purposefully through snow, being pursued by your psychopathic parent with an axe. Or maybe that’s just me? In any case, Stanley Kubrick’s blackly funny, endlessly disturbing masterpiece The Shining (1980) is the perfect alternative to Christmas cheer, being a ghost story that genuinely chills and unnerves, not least because of Jack Nicholson’s (intentionally) creepily OTT performance as the aforementioned psychopathic parent. There are countless theories as to what the film is really about, mostly spurious, but for a mixture of shocks, scares and laughs, it’s hard to do better.
Alexander Larman, critic
The Starbucks Christmas cup
Every year, the moment Starbucks unveils its Christmas-themed takeaway cups, I know the festive season is officially on its way. There’s something about this simple design change that fills me with anticipation for the holiday ahead—in fact, it inspired me to do some theming of my own. On 1st December, I box up every plate, dish, cup and linen in my kitchen and replace them with Christmassy versions. While it’s bittersweet to pack it all away after just one month, it’s now an annual tradition that my family and I cherish.
Wendy Miller, head of partnerships & advertising
The Holdovers
The Holdovers (2023), by turns heartwarming and melancholic, perfectly captures the feeling of the holiday period. The three main characters—played exceptionally by Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph—risk spending Christmas lonely and heartbroken. The only people left in a boys’ boarding school in New England after the other staff and students have returned to their families, they soon find humour and solace in each other’s company. This is a film to savour on Christmas night with a glass of mulled wine, once the Hallmark movies and Mariah Carey songs have been laid to rest.
Ben Clark, head of digital audience
Venice over Christmas
The year is 1978. Not a tourist in sight, apart from a group of German writers, an eccentric Englishman and a cub reporter (me). We visit San Michele Cemetery, where Pound and Stravinsky are buried; admire the Bellinis and Giottos; and drink champagne on a misty Grand Canal. There’s a “tatty splendour” to Venice, says the Englishman. Late one night, the courtesans stroll with their dogs through the puddles on St Mark’s Square. Venice’s winter magic lingers, nearly 50 years on.
Lionel Barber, contributing editor
