“In the midst of the next room was the biggest and most glorious Christmas tree that had ever been seen in Tatchester. It stood in a monstrous half-barrel full of what looked like real snow stuck about with holly and mistletoe. At the top of this great green fir tree was a globe of green light set about with fiery white rays for the Christmas Star.

The boughs were laden with the most exquisite gifts: whistles, drums, tops of different kinds, whips, trumpets, swords, pop-guns, pistols that fired caps and other which fired corks and many dolls and teddy bears for the little ones. For the older boys there were railways with signals and switches and passenger trains and goods trains, some of which went by steam and others by clockwork. There were airplanes which you could wind up so that they would fly about the room. There were farmyards with cocks and hens which really pecked and cows which waggled their heads. There were zoos with all sorts of animals and aquariums with all sorts of fish. Then there were mechanical toys, men boxing or wrestling and boxes of soldiers with cavalry and cannons, bricks and Meccano and all sorts of adventure books and fairy books. For the girls there were needle-boxes with silver thimbles and cases of needles, necklaces, bangles and brooches. There were boxes of chocolates, candied fruits and great glass bottles of barley sugar, raspberry drops, peppermint drops and acid drops. Then for both boys and girls there were toy boats, some with sails and some with clockwork engines. Hanging from the boughs here and there were white and scarlet stockings, all bulging with chocolate creams dome up in silver paper.

~The Box of Delights by John Masefield, p. 60-61

Poet John Masefield’s The Box of Delights is an odd sort of Christmas story. It reminds me a bit of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, except not as coherent and well-organized. Masefield was primarily a poet, but he wrote fiction, biography, history, and literary criticism as well as poetry. He was appointed Poet Laureate of England in 1930, and The Box of Delights was published in 1935

The edition I am reading was abridged*, and I am quite curious as to what the editor left out of the book and whether the additional parts that Masefield wrote would make the story more or less confusing. Magical things happen in the midst of ordinary days, but there are also what seem to be dream sequences in the middle of the night. Or maybe it’s all magic. Kay, the main character, has a small box entrusted to him by a traveling Punch and Judy man, and the box has magical powers to teleport Kay to other places and times and to shrink him and his friends down to mouse-size as well as to return them to their proper sizes.

There’s a gang of thieves and kidnappers who go around stealing things and “scrobbling” (abducting) people. The gang are really after the Box of Delights that Kay keeps in his pocket most of the time, but they’re in league with rats and wolves and all sort of evil creatures. Oh, and the villains have silent aeroplanes that they use to scrobble those that they think might have the Box.

The quote above comes from a description of the children’s Christmas party at the Bishop’s Palace, and it is quite a party, as you can tell. The entire book is worth reading, if only for the taste of children’s life and imagination in pre-World War II England. I’m not quite finished with the book, but I can truly say that I have no idea what will happen next in this very unpredictable Christmas holiday fantasy. If you like E. Nesbit, Lewis, or Joan Aiken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase, you might want to give Masefield a try. It’s strangely compelling.

*My edition of Box of Delights, in case you’re looking for something that’s only 167 pages long, was published by Macmillan, abridged by Patricia Crampton, and illustrated by Faith Jaques.