Liars' League

My Favourite Christmas Story: Katy Darby on David Sedaris's "Santaland Diaries"

I first discovered David Sedaris's hilarious mini-collection of Christmas-inspired stories, Holidays on Ice, in a charity shop for 50p: it was a worthwhile investment as that year I bought new copies for pretty much everyone I knew. It's still a go-to stocking-filler for any friend with a pulse and a sense of humour.

The blurb should give you an idea of the general style:
"Holidays on Ice collects six of David Sedaris's most profound Christmas stories into one slender volume perfect for use as a last-minute coaster or ice scraper. This drinking man's companion can be enjoyed by the warmth of a raging fire, the glow of a brilliantly decorated tree, or even in the backseat of a van or police car. It should be read with your eyes, felt with your heart, and heard only when spoken to. It should, in short, behave much like a book. And, oh, what a book it is!"

My Favourite Christmas Story: Michael Caines on "A Christmas Gift" by T. F. Powys

 

For Theodore Francis Powys, I would guess, Christmas wasn't quite the unique moment in the year that it has become for many people – that moment when they might just, among other things, consider going to church for a bit of a sing-song. Apart from anything else, Christianity was a constant presence in his life as a writer. He claimed that the only book he knew was the Bible (not true). A family anecdote has him stop on a walk through countryside as one of his brothers hid behind a bush and called out "Theodore!" Theodore replied: "Yes, God ...?"

My Favourite Christmas Story: Cherry Potts on Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

Cherry Potts writes:

Not the most obvious category for me to have a favourite in, being a bit of a pagan when it comes to midwinter festivities, but a story that  I think captures both the childhood excitement and the element of misrule that still occasionally creeps into the season is Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Written in the style of a memoir, but with Thomas’ capacity for both elegiac prose and mischief, it transcends the ‘Christmas ain’t what it used to be’ genre to be a classic – humorous, wicked and beautiful all at once. Rejoining young Dylan and his friend Jim as they stalk cats through the eternal ever since Wednesday snow, Eskimo-footed Arctic marksmen, and save Mr Prothero from the fire: we threw all our snowballs into the smoke; carol-singing with the ghost with a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small, dry voice through the keyhole and writing rude things about the neighbours in the snow, are some of the pleasures of the run up to midwinter.

My Favourite Christmas Story: David Lewis on Owen Egerton's "Nativity"

David Lewis writes:

Christmas is a time for mince pies and holiday-gone-wrong stories. Yep, that’s it. Those two things. Believe it. So I chose Owen Egerton’s Nativity, a story about a disastrous children’s Nativity play. It’s the opening chapter to his novel, The Book of Harold: The Illegitimate Son of God; but I read it years ago as a stand-alone piece in American Short Fiction. It still makes me laugh. 

Initially, the narrator’s tone is sarcastic. His introduction of Mrs Pock, the director of his church’s Nativity play, doesn’t compliment her judgment. “For her, the event was as holy as any hymn, any prayer, any stained glass window or Renaissance masterpiece.”

Santa's Christmas Snowstorm by Alan Graham

Click to play SANTA'S CHRISTMAS SNOWSTORM

Read by Sarah Feathers

It was going to be my first Christmas in London. Far away from home and the family – and I was so excited. Back home, as the tradition of seasonal bickering between relatives kicked in, I’d try and hide in my old room with a glass of wine for company. But I’d always end up being located by my tipsy mother who’d interrogate me with her “friendly questions” about boyfriends and friends of mine who already had families.

 

Obviously 3 Believers by Darren Lee

Click to play OBVIOUSLY 3 BELIEVERS

Read by Paul Clarke

It's Christmas Eve. We are poolside, paralysed, poleaxed in the aftermath of another gig. I perch on the end of my lounger and do another line of coke. Images fuse together, coalescing into an acceptable form of clarity. A graceful blonde cuts like a blade through the water while the party festively debauch themselves around her. In the near-distance the illuminated letters of the Hollywood sign form my only link with reality. Through a filter of tinitus, underneath the narcotic chatter, I can hear what I think is our first album.  

 

About Christmas by Carolyn Eden

Click to play ABOUT CHRISTMAS

Read by Carrie Cohen

Oh God – how am I going to tell her?  About Christmas.  Come to think of it, God, the whole thing’s your fault.  So much trouble caused by your blasted son’s birthday!  Bloody Capricorns! Knickers, because of Ian I’ve started blaspheming. I’ve become a real old bat, blaming my son-in-law for absolutely everything from the price of peas to the rise of nationalism amongst the lower middle classes. 

But seriously, how am I going to tell her?  We’ve always spent Christmas day together.

 

First Foot by Brindley Hallam Dennis

Click to play FIRST FOOT

Read by Ben Crystal

I had a Scottish friend. She was a Socialist, an intellectual. Yet at New Year, which she called Hogmanay, she was very superstitious about who she would let over her threshold for the first time after the hour had struck. I remember her turning away a dog-faced, pale-skinned orphan once. Don’t you bring your muddy paws across this threshold, she said, trying to make it sound like a joke.  It was minus fifteen that winter, and the kids' yellow teeth were chattering, and he was rubbing his cold, white hands together, but he had nothing in his pocket by way of money, or of coal, and he had a thin red scarf around his throat that the wind whipped and made look like a ragged cut. When I remember Henry, I always think of that night.

 

Mr Frost by Liam Hogan

Click to play MR FROST

Read by Lin Sagovsky

When anyone asks – whether it’s Greenpeace chuggers or energy firms trying to sell me loft insulation – I tell them I’m not worried about Global Warming. They tut, and shake their heads, and as they turn away having dismissed me for the foolish woman I appear, I rub the numbed patch of whitened skin on the heel of my hand and think back to the coldest night I’ve ever known.

 

My Favourite Christmas Story: Jonny Aldridge on James Joyce's "The Dead"

"The Dead" has shown up before in our favourite stories section, but we think this all the more reason to post about it again, as it must well worth a read.

Jonny Aldridge writes: I first read ‘The Dead’—the last piece in James Joyce’s 1914 short story collection Dubliners— because someone told me it was much shorter than Ulysses. And thank God I did, because ‘The  Dead’  is essentially a jolly fantastic  story  about  a  family  gathering at Christmastime. It has all of the festive gripes that you would expect from the debut of a 22-year-old writer:

• Having to put up with Irish nationalist grannies (“— And haven't you your own land to visit, continued Miss Ivors, that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?”)

• Wishing you were out in the snow, or in a food coma, or anywhere else “much more pleasant than at the supper-table!”

The Mondegreen by Esther Cleverly

Read by Katy Darby

I leave work early, find the bus-stop and stand watching old ladies smoke and feeling jealous. I guess once you’re seventy-odd you got nothing to lose. The smell of cigarette smoke reminds me of Sam now, especially Marlboro Reds. The old lady I’m standing next to is smoking a Winston, but still, I think of him. Waiting, in the motel room. Smoking on the balcony, maybe, bourbon in hand. I don’t let him smoke in bed in case David smells it on me. Smart, huh?

 

My Favourite Christmas Story: Liam Hogan on Isaac Asimov's "Christmas On Ganymede"

Liam Hogan writes:

I have to say, when asked to name a favourite festive short story, my mind is filled first and foremost with those from Liars' League's December shows. But then like a glittering fragment, it half-remembers a quirky little tale by the first and most prolific short story author I know - Isaac Asimov, and a quick internet trawl later, rediscovers Christmas On Ganymede.

As an uncle, I know the dangers of spinning a tale to a young mind, and in this story Asimov has an alien race captivated by descriptions of Santa Claus, and then a desperate attempt to make those tales come true. Asimov, as Wikipedia helpfully reminds me, liked his puns, and many of his humorous tales hinge on a throwaway ending ("A niche in time saves Stein" for example... ) but this tale keeps the humour all the way through, and then delivers an lovely sucker-punch at the end.

You can read Christmas On Ganymede at this link: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=366635090088758&story_fbid=402087156543551 

 

My Favourite Christmas Story: Richard Smyth on Damon Runyon's "Dancing Dan's Christmas"

Richard Smyth writes:

Every Christmas story should feature hitmen, hard liquor and close-harmony singing. Well, maybe not every Christmas story (though it would certainly liven up panto season) – but Damon Runyon’s Dancing Dan’s Christmas wouldn’t be half the story it is without these essential elements.

I defy you to read the opening of Dancing Dan’s Christmas without developing quite a strong conviction that a hot Tom and Jerry would really hit the spot just now. I defy you to read the first page without laughing. I defy you to read the whole thing without falling head-over-heels in love with Damon Runyon, and, what is more, feeling practically a hundred percent full of the Christmas spirit, at that.

My Favourite Christmas Story: James Field on Tove Jansson's "Snow"

James Field writes:

Snow by Tove Jansson is a very pretty story. It is simple, almost nothing: a little girl spends winter with her mother in a country house that belongs to somebody else. The mother, inattentive to her daughter’s moods, finds it easy to relax and work while the little girl sits pensively by the window, watching grey snow pile higher. She expects to be buried there, amongst another family’s furniture and clothing. Frightened, she awaits the inevitable.

The house is a summer home, made for another family and another season. It feels wrong to be there in winter and the girl loses her bearings. “It should be winter in town and summer in the country. Everything was topsy-turvy.” The girl in Snow seems especially vulnerable to the despondency of winter; she tries to follow individual snowflakes with her eyes as they fall, but the swirling infinity of flakes induces something like panic in her. The countlessness of falling snow is a thought too big to handle. As she explores the house she finds strings of dormant rooms to be unbearably sad, “like a train ready to leave, with its lights shining over the platform.”

My Favourite Christmas Story: David McGrath on John McTiernan's "Die Hard"

Who said that a favourite Christmas tale couldn't be a violent action film? Not us! 

  

"Davie", the twelve-year-old self of author David McGrath, insisted that we publish this:

"We meet John McClane who is just your average New York cop, on his way to meet his wife at the Nakatomi Tower in LA. It’s all going all right even though the wife has went and changed her last name on the poor prick and we feel sorry for him and kind of think she’s being a bit of a bitch trying to make it in the business world when she’s got kids at home. She has a nanny to mind them but it’s not really the same as having their mother there like.

Snow & Stars stories for Tuesday December 10th

It's like Christmas has come early! Yes, no need to feel your presents: the stories for our Snow & Stars event next Tuesday 10th December have been chosen!

 

They feature Hollywood rock stars, anti-Fascist gardeners, frozen strangers, phantom hounds, tips on how to get out of a family Christmas and Santa Claus on a massive coke bender. The League Elves will also throw in free mince pies, a bumper Christmas book quiz, and more tinsel than is strictly sensible.

SNOW & STARS WINNING STORIES

About Christmas by Carolyn Eden
Santa's Christmas Snowstorm by Alan Graham
First Foot by Brindley Hallam Dennis 
Obviously Three Believers by Darren Lee
Mr. Frost by Liam Hogan

So pull up your sleigh to The Phoenix (address below) at 7pm on Tue Dec 10th and join us for our seasonal spectacular, in which our top authors and actors of the year will be announced, quiz questions will be asked, and secret surprises (well, books) will be pulled out of Santa's sack for the lucky winners!

 

Tickets cost £5 on the door (cash only, no advance booking) and seating is unreserved - so it's a good idea to get there a bit ahead of time if you want a good table. (NB - if you want to eat off the Phoenix's Festive Menu, it's best to pre-order your food by emailing [email protected] This shouldn't be necessary if you're having only one course, but better safe than sorry ...)

The venue is downstairs at:
The Phoenix Pub
37 Cavendish Square
London
W1G 0PP

The Phoenix is 5 minutes' walk from Oxford Circus tube station, which is on the Victoria, Bakerloo and Central lines. Map here

My Favourite Christmas Story: Dean Kisling & Katy Darby on O. Henry's "The Gift Of The Magi"

Dean Kisling writes:

I hated Christmas.  Not, of course, when I was very young, and got giddily excited by getting free stuff.  But later, when I began to vaguely understand that the gift I wanted most was never inside those colorfully wrapped packages.  I also wanted to give something meaningful to my parents and siblings.  I was given a small amount of money that I had not earned to buy gifts for others.  I didn't really know what they wanted either.

By the time I was ten or so, I felt more like a criminal than an agent of Santa Claus, and I cringed in shame every time Christmas came around.  And then I read this story that seemed to explain it all, in a way even a reluctant adolescent criminal could understand.  And the story gave me the gift I most wanted... to know that I was not alone.

The first Christmas season I spent with my later to be wife, I described this story. I had long forgotten the title and author, but she instantly named both. She was right, as she is about so many things, and she has been that gift to me.

An Intern's Favourite Liars' League Christmas Story

by Liars' League Intern 2013, Linnea Hurst

When asked to write about my favourite Christmas story I racked my brain, but nothing came to mind. Fortunately, I avoided embarrassing myself in the future by reading over the Christmas themed Liars' League stories of the past (found here), and I can now proudly say that I have a favourite festive narrative.

In "Are We Nearly There Yet" by Emily Pedder, Pedder whisks the reader away into the midst of Oxford Street right before Christmas, yet this story is not concerned with the world of cheery lights or glamorous Harrods window displays. Instead, "Are We Nearly There Yet" delves into the less overt but just as pervasive class divides and pretensions that waft as thick as perfume in central London during Christmas time.