The Octave of Christmas has ended, but we are still in the Twelve Days of Christmas! Today is Day 9. For the last week, I’ve been slowly reading through one of the old Signet Christmas Anthologies, A Regency Christmas Present. All the stories in this collection were by authors I’d previously read and liked. Though all the stories were good, my favorites were Barbara Metzger’s “Christmas Wish List” and Edith Layton’s “The Last Gift.”

“Christmas Wishlist” is one of Metzger’s characteristic madcap comedies. For a novella, it has a surprisingly large cast of characters, because the story is not about one central couple. Rather, it chronicles the wishes of several people from different walks of life whose lives intersect one fateful holiday. All of them want something specific for Christmas, whether that be a new spouse or an adorable kitten. Ultimately, they all end up getting what they need, which may or may not be what they expected.

Edith Layton’s “The Last Wish,” the final story in the collection, is structured more like a short story than a novella, with no separate chapters. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I will say that this story reads like a fairy tale. Though there is a central romance and a HEA, in many ways I was more interested in the question “What exactly is going on here?” than with the development of the relationship between the leads. It was a memorable and well-written story!

Next up: another Signet anthology, this time Regency Christmas Magic, published in 2004. This anthology features some of my favorite Regency authors from the 90s and ’00s, including Metzger and Layton again, as well as a couple of writers whose work I’ve not yet read. This will probably end up being the last anthology I read this year, as the Christmas season comes to an end.