Christmas Card From A Friend

Christmas Card from a Friend (2015) by Geoffrey B. Lewis. Shedgnome. ISBN: None. Condition: Good.

There are Christmas books filled with recipes, Christmas books filled with carols, Christmas books filled with glossy photographs of impossibly tidy sitting rooms where not a single pine needle has dared fall onto the carpet. Then there are books like Christmas Card from a Friend—quiet, personal and rather like finding an unexpected handwritten card tucked between the bills and takeaway menus on the doormat.

Published in 2015 by the wonderfully named Shedgnome, Geoffrey B. Lewis offers something refreshingly unfashionable: a gentle collection of seasonal reflections that values warmth over spectacle. It belongs to that increasingly endangered species of writing that assumes Christmas isn’t measured by the size of the turkey or the speed at which online parcels arrive, but by moments of kindness, memory and companionship.

Of course, Christmas has always been a curious affair. We spend weeks promising ourselves we’ll keep things simple this year before somehow acquiring enough food to feed a minor principality. We enthusiastically untangle fairy lights that were packed away with absolute confidence twelve months earlier, only to discover they have somehow evolved into an object of impossible geometry. We write cards to people we haven’t seen since last Christmas, solemnly promising to "meet up soon," fully aware that the next correspondence will almost certainly begin, "Can you believe it’s Christmas already?"

Books like this gently encourage us to slow the whole business down.

Geoffrey B. Lewis writes with the easy familiarity of someone pulling up an armchair beside the fire rather than standing at a lectern delivering a lecture. The tone is thoughtful without becoming heavy, sentimental without becoming syrupy, and quietly optimistic in a way that feels earned rather than manufactured. It is less interested in grand declarations than in the small moments that quietly become the most memorable parts of the festive season.

One of the nicest things about a modestly published volume like this is its lack of pretension. It isn’t trying to become the definitive work on Christmas, nor does it arrive wrapped in celebrity endorsements and television tie-ins. It simply offers a collection of reflections from one person to another, rather like the title suggests. There is something rather comforting about that. In an age where everything seems determined to become a franchise, this book remains content simply to be itself.

It also serves as a reminder that Christmas literature occupies a wonderfully broad church. Somewhere between Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the supermarket’s annual cookbook lies an entire world of personal writing—books that celebrate friendship, generosity and the peculiar mixture of nostalgia and hope that seems to arrive every December whether we’ve ordered it or not.

This copy remains in good condition, making it an appealing addition for collectors of Christmas books, lovers of gentle reflective writing, or anyone who enjoys discovering small-press publications that might otherwise slip quietly beneath the festive radar. It’s the sort of book that doesn’t demand attention from the shelf but somehow seems entirely appropriate when the evenings draw in and the kettle goes on.

From Crappy Old Books—because not every Christmas gift needs batteries, Bluetooth or a 300-page instruction manual. Sometimes the nicest present is simply a thoughtful message from a friend. And unlike that novelty Christmas jumper someone bought you in 2017, this one is unlikely to spend the next decade hiding at the back of the wardrobe.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Geoffrey B Lewis