Christmas is Coming Celebrate the Holiday with Art, Stories, Poems, Songs, and Recipes

Powerful, powerful book Christmas is Coming Celebrate the Holiday with

Art, Stories, Poems, Songs, and Recipes wanted by Metropolitan Museum of Art published by Abrams Books. Wonderfully and entirely illustrated using paintings of the most beloved recent or oldest painters, this book will be a wonderful gift for young readers, true but also for everyone else, in particular if in love for the festivity.

Absolutely captivating, it captures the essence of Christmas in many ways. 

If the first part the book introduces the word Christmas, so the arrival of Jesus Christ, the second part Stories and Tales is maybe the most powerful section to my point of view; moving stories, moving tales in grade of opening also the hardest heart of this world. 

I can tell you that: I cried a lot reading most of these stories. I didn't know some of them: I knew

 the fairy-tale of the elves ad the shoe-maker because I read it when very little, but, for example I didn't remember the story of Papa Panov's special Christmas. Translated into english by Tolstoj: this one is a short tale about a man waiting for the arrival of Jesus. Oh: tremendously impressive!

Absolutely stunning the letter written by the staff of the New York Sun, replying at a kid called Virginia; the little girl asked if Santa Claus existed, because people sometimes don't believe at him. Keeping Christmas by Henry Van Dyke is the powerful summary of what Christmas is. 

We will also meet a moving short tale by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Uncle Richard's Christmas Dinner, where we see a man auto-isolated by the rest of his family and rhe compassionate gesture of his niece.

The Third Part it's all about the most beloeved Christmas's songs while the Fourth Part is about Poems. One I loved a lot is

Christmas is Coming 

Christmas is Coming,

the geese are getting fat,

please put a penny

in the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny

a ha'penny will do;

If you haven't got a ha'penny

then God bless you!

This poem it's about being grateful for what we have, sharing what we have with people less lucky than us.

The final Fifth Part it's about Christmas's recipes.

What is Christmas of not the joy of sharing with others our love, friendship, compassion, generosity, hospitality? And let's remember that Christmas is not just for a day: it should be celebrated everyday with the same joy of December 25th.

Highly recommended.

I thank Abrams & Chronicle Books for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori