Determined Dad Saves a Christmas Gone Awry in The Night Before the Night Before Christmas

Christmas is a time of happiness and beauty, when all the world is supposed to glisten in candy-coated splendor, when flawless feasts are supposed to tantalize the nostrils, when peace and brotherhood are supposed to reign. Only sometimes, it doesn't quite work that way. Sometimes the perfect celebration doesn't seem possible, and all the stress of the holiday seems to outweigh the joy and wonder. There have been days when even I, the girl who has read hundreds of Christmas books and would listen to carols in July if it wouldn't drive everyone else crazy, have had occasion to wonder whether it might just be easier to say "Wake me up when December ends."

In The Night Before the Night Before Christmas, a take-off on Clement C. Moore's classic poem by Natasha Wing and illustrated by Mike Lester, nothing seems to be going right in the family of the young narrator. Mom has the flu. She's sick and miserable, and consequently she's not really up to all the Christmassy tasks that await. Dad steps up to help, but disaster befalls him too, and chaos escalates. After a day full of burnt cookies, scrawny evergreens, holey stockings, burnt-out light bulbs, scary Santas and decimated decorations, it looks like Christmas is ruined. Can anything be salvaged from the wreckage of the holiday preparations?

The narrator is a wide-eyed little girl who observes the calamitous series of events with incredulity. Her infant brother Patrick is a cutie pie who seems to be enjoying the anticipation, at least until he meets up with the intimidating old elf. Mom looks completely exhausted, and it's clear that she's only going to be a trooper to a certain point. Dad, however, is all chipper good cheer, and he doesn't let the mishaps get him down. He's my favorite character in the book, reminding me of lovable, upbeat Arthur Weasley, the peppy papa J. K. Rowling just couldn't bear to kill off.

The book's cartoonish illustrations are fun and vibrant, and while the narration's rhyme scheme is occasionally inconsistent, for the most part it reads very well, and I like to think of the rocky spots as a reflection of the fact that the speaker is a child imitating her favorite Christmas poem rather than as sloppy writing on Wing's part. The book's nuclear family attempting to prevent their Christmas from going horribly awry makes me think of A Christmas Story, while Dad's refusal to let all the problems get him down because, after all, "those things are just stuff," seems to echo the anti-commercial message of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The Night Before the Night Before Christmas is a charming little story demonstrating that although the trappings of the holiday are nice, it's much better not to get too bogged down in them. As Dad so succinctly puts it, "Christmas is about love." Well said.