MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC
One night, long ago, when Matt Haig was trying to help his young son get to sleep, seven-year-old Lucas asked a question: “What was Father Christmas like as a boy?”
“I didn’t have an answer,” recalls the bestselling author. “But I went away and I wrote the answer.”
The result was the 2015 book, A Boy Called Christmas. In time for this festive season it has become a film, starring Jim Broadbent, Sally Hawkins, Toby Jones and Maggie Smith, and is created by the same people as the Paddington movies.
Haig has given Santa an origin story full of elves and reindeer and snow and magic… but within
