Christmas stories

Four is a small collection, which is an advantage in December: you can read them in order and know exactly what is coming.

The two gentle ones

Santa Never Forgets! is the longest at seven minutes and the most reassuring, and it is the one for a child who has started to worry about being missed out or forgotten. Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas is four minutes about a scarecrow who finds somewhere he belongs; it is listed for three to seven and is the quietest thing on the page.

The two with a bit more going on

A Christmas Star is four minutes, told in rhyme, and moves briskly enough for a child who is far too excited to lie still. Little Girl's Christmas is five minutes about making the memories rather than receiving the gifts, and it reads well on Christmas Eve itself.

The usual mistake is to start Christmas stories on the first of the month and be sick of them by the tenth. Four stories spread across four weeks works better: one a week, each on the same night, so the story becomes part of the count-down rather than the whole of it.

Excitement is the real problem on those nights, not story choice. If your child is vibrating by the twenty-third, what to do when your child won't settle is more use than another story. Keep Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas back for Christmas Eve: it is short, it is calm, and it ends with somebody safely indoors.

Four stories will not see you through Advent. Winter and snow stories is the larger pool with the same weather and none of the sugar, and gentle sleepy stories covers the nights when the point is simply to bring the temperature down.

For the giving rather than the getting, the kindness stories carry the same idea all year, and Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe is midwinter in everything but name: six minutes, one shoe, and a child with almost nothing to give.

Out of season, these four still read perfectly well in June. Santa Never Forgets! is really a story about being remembered, and it does that job in any month.