There haven’t been many Grinches or Scrooges or shouts of “Bah Humbug” this holiday season, but Entertainment Weekly has offered the next best thing:

“‘Tis (Not) The Season: Top Five Anti-Holiday Reads.”

Updike has been making a lot of “best” lists this season, and he makes this one as well, coming in at #2 right behind Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! with a book that may be unfamiliar to many Updike fans: The Twelve Terrors of Christmas, featuring illustrations by fellow Harvard alum Edward Gorey. The hardcover book was published in 2006 by Pomegranate Communications and released in a revised edition a year later. You can find a copy, as with almost all out-of-print books, at Abebooks.com.

In making the selection, Entertainment Monthly‘s Madeline Poage writes, “An old one, but a good one, Updike’s wry voice and natural sense of humor flows organically through this compact work. A deconstruction of every facet of Christmas, the book unpacks every ritual and tradition down to the bare bones. Mercilessly witty and disturbingly accurate, every aspect of Christmas if put to the test against logic—what are Santa’s true motives? How do reindeer landing of roofs not destroy them by accident? Do the elves need a union? And of this wouldn’t be complete without Edward Gorey’s illustrations, haunting and stark on every page. For anyone tired of the Christmas hype, this is an absolute must.”