Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by Anon
King Arthur "lay at Camylot upon krystmasse" with "many lustlych lorde", but festivities are interrupted by the arrival of a gigantic green knight, who invites Gawain to decapitate him - provided he accepts a retaliatory blow. Gawain duly lops off his opponent's head, but is appalled to find him still alive and kicking. He must meet him at the Green Chapel next Christmas to get the return blow.

Little Women
by Louisa M Alcott
The book begins with Jo grumbling about the impending disappointment of a Christmas day with no presents, but by chapter two the sisters are staging an enviably jolly celebration. Mother may have banned gifts - too self-indulgent with the men off fighting - but she says nothing against amateur dramatics.

A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
As GK Chesterton wonderingly said, "Dickens devoted his genius in a somewhat special sense to the description of happiness". So the most famous of all Christmas stories depends not only on Scrooge being made to feel bad but also on him being given glimpses of others' happiness.

Under the Greenwood Tree
by Thomas Hardy
The one Hardy novel that unambiguously celebrates the delights of rural life naturally features a bucolic Christmas. On Christmas morning in Mellstock, Dick Dewey performs in the church choir, giddy at the sight of the new village schoolteacher, Fancy Day. In the evening there is a big dance, and Dick's successful "love-passes" make it the best Christmas day of his life.

The Tailor of Gloucester
by Beatrix Potter
In this wittily magical tale, the mayor of Gloucester is getting married on Christmas day, and the sick old tailor is making his magnificent nuptial suit. He runs out of "cherry-coloured twist" for the buttonholes, but the mice beautifully finish the job. Snow falls on Gloucester and the bells ring out.

A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
by James Joyce
Young Stephen Dedalus is allowed to eat with the adults on Christmas day for the first time. But when his father Simon is presiding, a good row is only a provoking phrase away. Passions soon erupt over the turkey and "sauce".

A Child's Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas
Figuratively ripe - "when I was a boy when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills" - but then self-indulgence is a proper Christmas inclination. Thomas's short story manages to gratify readers' nostalgia as well as his own.

Bridget Jones's Diary
by Helen Fielding
Forget the film, with Colin Firth far too suave to wear that Xmas jumper. The book, more amusingly, covers a year that ends with a delirious Christmas, and stuffy Darcy festively prompted to declare his love for our heroine.

The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
The variously hopeless Lambert siblings are sucked back home by mother Enid for a gloomily anticipated Christmas. They bring their different disasters with them, and are greeted by Enid's creatively terrible presents. And the grim reaper looms over proceedings.