Reading Christmas Books in July — A Defense of the Off-Season Reader

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MarkTheHerald.com

✦ The Herald Dispatch ✦

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Let me make the case that you should read a Christmas book this summer.

I know how that sounds. I am aware that the Christmas music doesn't start until at least November 1st and that the retail decorations, while arriving earlier every year, have not quite crept all the way back to July. I am not suggesting you put up a tree or start wrapping gifts or do anything that would alarm your neighbors.

I am suggesting that July, specifically, might be the best month of the year to read a Christmas book.

And I have a genuine argument for this.

The Case for the Off-Season Read

Here is the primary problem with reading Christmas books in December: you're in the middle of it.

December is full. It is logistically demanding and emotionally charged and schedules in December have a way of compressing time rather than expanding it. Reading in December happens in the margins — in the fifteen minutes before the kids go to bed on the eighteenth, in the brief pause between the school concert and the neighborhood party.

That kind of reading is better than no reading. But it's not the same as reading with actual space around it.

July gives you space. The schedule is looser. The emotional temperature is lower. There's no

anticipation pressing against the reading experience, which paradoxically means you can actually inhabit the book more fully than you can when Christmas is three days away and the gifts aren't wrapped yet.

I read MARK! The Herald Angel aloud to my family on a summer evening on the porch. We weren't rushing toward anything. There was no Christmas Eve pressure. We just read it — slowly, with the voices, letting the funny moments be funny and the moving moments be moving — and we arrived at the ending without the distortion that December can put on an experience.

And then we spent the next five months looking forward to the Christmas it described.

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What the Summer Read Does for December

Here's the other argument: reading a Christmas book in July gives you five months to think about how you want to share it.

One of the most common things I hear from families who read MARK! The Herald Angel is that they immediately wanted to give it to someone. A family member. A friend. A neighbor they'd been meaning to connect with. The book is, in their words, the kind of thing you want to press into someone's hands.

If you read it in December, you may not have time to act on that impulse before Christmas has passed. If you read it in July, you have the whole year to plan. You can order extra copies. You can think about which families in your orbit would be most moved by it. You can make it part of a Christmas gift rather than an afterthought.

There's also a simpler argument: a book that you've read and loved and thought about for five months is a book that you recommend to other people. Word of mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing that exists, and it requires time and genuine enthusiasm. July readers tend to be the best December recommenders.

So read the Christmas book in July. Take your time with it. Let it sit with you through the summer. And see what happens to your December.

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✦ MARK! The Herald Angel — available now, no matter what month it is.

Order at MarkTheHerald.com and start your five months of anticipation today.