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