Christmas in a Jugular Vein

Author David Benjamin has always been fascinated by Christmas—and by Christmas stories, starting with the Book of Luke. But the holiday tale that tickled Benjamin’s literary fancy was Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” a story which, Benjamin believes, opened the door to countless variations on holiday themes, from Scrooge to Kris Kringle to the Grinch and beyond.

“Beyond” is where Benjamin began to venture with his first Christmas story, “The Little Red Dot,” written when he was sixteen and published (in a slightly censored form) in his high-school newspaper’s holiday edition.

Since then, said Benjamin, “I’ve tried to compose a new Christmas story every year. During my tenure as editor of the Mansfield (Mass.) News, I contrived to fill our fat holiday issue with Christmas stories written by kids in every grade of the Mansfield schools. The results were a joy to the world.

Christmas in a Jugular Vein compiles 38 of Benjamin’s wildly variant and slightly transgressive holiday tales and poems. Among the contents of this sometimes startling, often humorous and occasionally poignant anthology:

• Eight dramas set in Bethlehem on or around 25 December 0000 AD, with all the familiar players and a few surprises, including a fat old man in a red suit, the “Fourth King” and the “Fourth Ghost,” a Roman centurion named Marcus Suspicius, a skeptical shepherd and a pushy but prescient yuletide impresario named Izzy Glick

• An email from the Parkers, who’ve been imprisoned through Christmas in their “smart home” and its electronic system, the Acme “Total Home Interactive Networking Grid” (THING)

• Parodies and take-offs after the style of Dickens (of course), Clement Moore, Lewis Carroll (“Santawocky”) and Robert Service

• The further adventures of Murray Lefkowitz, the drunk Santa kicked out of the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade by Maureen O’Hara in Miracle on 34th Street

• The holiday depredations of George the cat

• Several of Benjamin’s personal essays about the joys and miseries of Christmas

• And hey, what’s Christmas without a zombie or two—or lots of ’em?

Nick Chiarkas, author of the award-winning novel Nunzio’s Way, said, “This is a captivating, often irreverent, peek into the heart and creative mind of a master storyteller. Benjamin had me hooked with the first story, ‘The Little Red Dot.’ I continued turning pages to the end of the collection, chuckling at times and gasping occasionally.

“A chuckle, a gasp, but always entertained. The author’s clever insights are woven throughout the collection. You will not want to stop reading Christmas in a Jugular Vein until the very end, and then, you will return to it from time to time.”