This beautifully designed book, containing well over one hundred poems for Christmas, old and new, traditional and modern, has at last been issued in paperback. The collection is organized into four sections starting in winter, moving through Advent, and arriving at the Nativity and the heart of the Christmas season. Finally, with the arrival of the Wise Men, comes the promise of a new year. Full of old chestnuts like "The Night Before Christmas", there are surprises here too in poems like Thomas Hardy's " 1924" and Elizabeth Jennings' "Afterthought". The poets include Robert Lowell, John Betjeman, Elizabeth Coatsworth, William Blake, Madeleine L'Engle and many, many more.