Here's a Christmas book you can "read" in 5 minutes or 50 minutes, depending on the limits of your imagination. An Edwardian Christmas by John S. Goodall is a picture book for children and adults.
You might know John S. Goodall better as the illustrator of the Miss Read novels. In this book, as he did in An Edwardian Summer, Goodall pictures a young brother and sister. This time they travel on early to the country home of an uncle and aunt and two cousins, accompanied by their governess.
Nearer to Christmas, their parents arrive also, and then the Christmas festivities begin with trimming the large tree in the entrance hall. They attend Christmas Eve services, joined by an elderly grandmother.
On Boxing Day there is the Hunt to attend and a visit to a retired nanny.
Fun continues through New Years, both upstairs and downstairs in the servants' quarters.
All too soon it is time for the cousins to say goodbye to each other as the London family departs.
I bought this book in 1979 when our third child was a newborn. His older sister and I changed the story each reading, adding more details and story twists. And when all four of our children grew up it became my Advent Calendar, perching on my piano rack, a page turned daily.
In the U.S. the little book is not cheap but I found copies here and here beginning at $27.
