here comes santy clause

The end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade traditionally signals the official start of the Christmas season in New York City. Personally, I always kick off the season by reading The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a big favor and pick up a copy. If you’ve read it in the past, read it again because I guarantee you’ve forgotten just how funny it is. It’s clever and dark. It’ll jingle your bells.

My other traditional holiday read is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I’ll pick it up about a week or so before Christmas. One day, I hope to own a first edition that includes the eight beautiful illustrations by John Leech—four woodcut and four hand colored etchings. This one is my favorite: Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball.


In case I’m on your gift list, I think you can get a pretty decent first edition for about $20K. Until then, I’ll have to make do with visiting the copy that the Morgan Library puts on display every season.