Jolabokaflod - a word I never knew I needed

The December nights are long and cold in Iceland. And, with alcohol at prohibitive prices, literature becomes the local solution. Jolabokaflod is the festive tradition of turning up at your mate’s on Christmas Eve with the gift of a book. Volumes exchanged, everybody slumps by the fire in a companionable silence and reads the night away.

I don’t know about you, but for me that really might be the most wonderful time of the year. It partly reminds me of family Christmases past. Mum and Dad read for pleasure – in Dad’s case, he couldn’t even pass a community centre noticeboard without devouring the details of slimming classes and prospective handymen. With a couple of kids on the scene, the only way to carve out time for literary reflection was to sign the youngsters up to the biblio-team.

Thus, whatever the occasion, books were on the agenda. No Christmas or birthday complete without a reading wish list. No family holiday undertaken without plenty to read, and often texts curated to reflect the destination. These might be destined to be read on the beach, but they were rarely beach reading. Escapist fluff, especially ill-written, mass-marketed fluff with golden embossed letters on the cover, was rarely offered or desired.

A childhood Christmas tended to look like this. Up early, and marching into Mum and Dad’s room with a stocking. The first flurry of unwrapping; moderate rapture, knowing that there was more to come. Then downstairs, bacon butties, and the assault on the pile beneath the tree. Contents varied year on year, Lego giving way to computer games, then music. But the books were a constant.

Christmas dinner was always at lunchtime (I promise that sentence makes perfect sense in the northeast of England, however awkward it might seem in those foreign lands where dinner happens at ‘teatime’, or in the evening). So the morning was a mix of getting under parental feet in the kitchen, emptying the tub of Quality Street and mild sibling squabbles over new toys.

But after dinner, instead of kowtowing to the Queen’s speech, it was off into a world of literature. As kids, we always knew that books made a highly acceptable gift for parents and invested accordingly. We also understood that if we didn’t provide subtle hints, more obvious hints and, eventually, outright demands for preferred literature, we’d still get books but with little influence over what we might read. Better to ask for suitable sci-fi, rather than risk falling victim to parental whim.

With books piled around the living room, the next obvious step was to start reading. A warm house, a big dinner, the comforting swish of turned page. Eyelids get strangely heavy. Yawns get deeper. After the frantic finale of the school term and the fever pitch of last-minute preparations, everybody gets a well-earned rest. Only after that could we contemplate the ceremonial opening of the vast silver tin of M&S biscuits (a secular Christmas ritual imbued with almost religious intensity, where even the oddly dry and tasteless almond thins were a kind of incarnate

It might not sound like much, but it was familiar, comforting, consistent, warm. The garish distractions of colourful plastic faded into adulthood, but bookish memories live on. Memories of a first encounter with Terry Pratchett, the excitement of the new Douglas Adams. The unexpected joy of discovering the Animals of Farthing Wood or journeying through the Phantom Tollbooth. And, of course, giggling my way through the novelisation of Ghostbusters and imagining myself a wisecracking Bill Murray, always last to go first.

Into adolescence, the wish list was less flexible, the surprises fewer. Satisfaction guaranteed, but astonishment all the rarer. Greater age, greater wisdom? Perhaps not, but adulthood brought less micromanagement and more unexpected journeys: through Siberia with Colin Thubron, on the trail of the Templars with Umberto Eco (like Dan Brown with intellectual dexterity), around Istanbul with Orhan Pamuk, or into provincial Russia with Anton Chekhov. Some of these books shaped my life, sent me far from home to work and explore in foreign lands.

Today, I’m back where I grew up. My childhood home is within walking distance as I write. Now, I’m filling the stocking rather than emptying it. And there was a great sense of joy when a jagged piece of torn-off notepaper arrived on my desk a couple of weeks ago. In neat but childish handwriting, there was a list from my daughter. The heading? Christmas books please.

Thanks for reading!