Christmas is a time for celebrating the birth of Jesus with family and friends, to gather together in sacred and jovial celebration of the Incarnation. Yet in our fast-paced, hyper-digitized lives, we are losing the sense of a good story, among good friends, around a good fire.

In Christmas Around the Fire, Ryan Topping invites us to turn off the television set, put down the device, quiet ourselves, and gather our loved ones to enjoy some of the best writing, in a variety of forms, about Christmas. Whether or not your family has an actual fireplace around which to gather is not so important, but it helps!

Included within are entries from legendary novelists and poets such as Leo Tolstoy, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Willa Cather, and more, as well as the profound thoughts of great religious figures such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Saint John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI.

For those who love the true spirit of the “most wonderful time of the year”, and who love reading in almost equal measure, Christmas Around the Fire will quickly become a family tradition. This is one of those rarest of books, one around which family memories are made.