Review: Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

I'm on a roll.  Six left to go.

In John Grisham's Skipping Christmas, middle-class parents Luther and Nora Krank have had enough of the commercialism of Christmas -- at least for this year.  Their daughter, Blair, is in Peru with the Peace Corps, and Nora is unable to face the holiday routine in an empty house.  Luther, for his part, is sick of what he deems wasted money and the commercialism of the holiday.  So the Kranks make a vow -- they will not celebrate Christmas (including no decorating, no cards, no Christmas parties) -- and they will spend their money on a Caribbean cruise instead.  Word travels fast, and their friends and neighbors are outraged by the Kranks' perceived absence of holiday cheer.  Luther and Nora press on grimly, set in their opinion that they have the right to "skip Christmas" if they so choose.  But when an unforeseen holiday guest shows up on Christmas Eve, the Kranks realize that their brilliant plan may not have been so brilliant after all.

This is the time of year when you're really in the mood to read Christmas stories, and this one is a doozy.  Christmas in the Kranks' neighborhood is ridiculous, devoid of privacy and any perceived sanity.  The entire neighborhood bans together to decorate their street for the Christmas with identical plastic Frosty the Snowmen up on their roofs (you can see it in the picture above and to the right).  Nora and Luther (traditionally) spend $600 on their personalized Christmas cards (what?), and everyone they know turns out for their annual Christmas bash, to the point where they're all furious and irate that it's been canceled for the year (does nobody in this town have family?).  It seems that the Christmas cheer and well-being of the entire neighborhood, the local businesses, the entire little world of the book, is focused and dependent upon the Kranks' traditional Christmas cheer.  And when it vanishes, the backlash is astounding.

I don't know about John Grisham, but I know plenty of people who don't decorate their houses for Christmas, who don't send Christmas cards, who don't participate in the overwhelming commercialism of the season.  And nobody photographs their dark houses and puts the picture on the front page of the evening paper.  The overwhelming backlash to Luther and Nora's decision to abstain from Christmas is ridiculous and way far-fetched.  Although Luther is a grumpy curmudgeon and Nora a spineless parrot, the idiocy of their neighbors and coworkers practically forced me to cheer for them and champion their right to do as they pleased.

The scrapes and exploits that the Kranks get into during their month of living Christmas-less are humorous, but the humor mounts when Luther and Nora are reluctantly thrown into the chaos of trying to throw together Christmas with only six hours to spare.  When you come to the end of the book, it is apparent that both Luther and Nora have learned something, as have a couple of their neighbors.  Some of the nosier ones, though...apparently not.

Rating: *** and 1/2