Book Review of Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

This is almost, but not quite, a story of a modern day Scrooge. It follows a well-to-do family of three. With their daughter away with the Peace Corps, Luther and Nora decide to skip Christmas - they believe in a celebration of Christ’s birth but decide to skip the commercialism, decoration and the many parties in between, in favour of a cruise. You wouldn’t realise how much opposition such a decision could garner.

The story follows the reaction of others, most especially that of the neighbours, with regard to exterior house decorating and carol singing etc. I felt quite sorry for the Kranks, as the things they choose to skip are merely societal add-ons to a Christian celebration – add-ons most of us enjoy but in this story add-ons that the community use to berate and ridicule the Kranks over.

In truth I didn’t enjoy the majority of this story, it has that stressful felling like that found for me in Confessions of a Shopaholic – you just want people to start behaving as they should (in Confessions . . . I just wanted the main character to wise up and stop spending – in this story I wanted the neighbours etc. to just give it a rest and let the Kranks alone). However as the story continued I hit my “almost gave up reading but so glad I didn’t” stress point because the story arced and curved beautifully and it ended very “A Christmas Carol” like with its own happy ending and morals to boot.

Not entirely my kinda story until the conclusion but I think many would enjoy it. Keep an eye out for it for a stocking-filler or just a nice Christmassy read for the end of the year. It is a nice easy read with short chapters so it’s a good book for snatching a few minutes of reading here and there as I did with it.

Otherwise you could always watch the movie version as I’ll be doing. During the yuletide season I’ll be keeping a lookout for “Christmas with the Kranks” in the TV guide. I missed seeing it by a day last year - so haven’t yet viewed it, so use your own discretion over who you allow to watch it, you never know what Hollywood will do to a movie version of a book after all!

Sidenote: Hubs enjoyed it far better than I!