Opening with scenes from E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker, Willa Cather's My Ántonia, and Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, this sumptuous treasury celebrates the anticipation, the customs, the memories, and the spirit of Christmas in an oversized, large-type edition with gilt-edged pages and a ribbon marker. Here are 31 short pieces, poems, and excerpts by writers like Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Pearl S. Buck, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dylan Thomas. Equally charming are scores of luminous color plates by Currier & Ives, Gustave Doré, Paul Gauguin, Childe Hassam, Grandma Moses, Thomas Nast, Arthur Rackham, Diego Rivera, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, N.C. Wyeth, and numerous anonymous illustrators and engravers.