SANTA CLAUS: A BIOGRAPHY
By Gerry Bowler
McClelland & Stewart, 278 pages, $17.95

THE NATIVITY: HISTORY AND LEGEND
By Geza Vermes
Doubleday, 172 pages, $17.95

FAMILY GUY: PETER GRIFFIN’S GUIDE TO THE HOLIDAYS
By Danny Smith
Harper Paperback, 151 pages, $18.95

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
By Caroline Kennedy
Hyperion, 332 pages, $26.95

THE LATKE WHO COULDN'T STOP SCREAMING: A CHRISTMAS STORY
By Lemony Snicket
McSweeney’s, 43 pages, $9.95

Not being of the Christmas persuasion, I respond to Christmas books much as I do to DIY sex videos: with a perplexed grimace, uncertain what, exactly, you’re supposed to do with them. Do you tuck yourself into bed with a Christmas book in June to remember the pleasures of Christmas past? Do you integrate the Christmas book into celebrations of Christmas present? Or is the Christmas book a resource for improving Christmas yet to come? In hopes of enlightenment, I plucked a few titles from the annual deluge.

Bruce David Forbes’ Christmas: A Candid History and Gerry Bowler’s Santa Claus: A Biography tell essentially the same story, except Mr. Forbes devotes a book to Christmas and a chapter to Santa, while Mr. Bowler reverses those proportions. Mr. Bowler also adds a tirade against “the Umbrage Industry,” which came up with the “nasty idea” that Christmas is “a threat to social harmony,” while Mr. Forbes more gently explores the challenges of “wrestling with Christmas.”

Both Christmas mavens quote Libanius of Antioch on the fourth-century celebration of Kalends, a Christmas precursor during which “the impulse to spend seizes everyone” and “a stream of presents pours itself out on all sides.” Both assemble an assortment of medieval St. Nicholas legends, including the miraculous rescue of three murdered students pickled in a barrel. Both point out that late-19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, who gave us our contemporary image of Santa—in particular the belt—also dreamed up the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey.

Esteemed Bible scholar Geza Vermes goes further back in The Nativity: History and Legend, an examination of what actually happened in Bethlehem on Dec. 25, 1 A.D. Turns out not much: Jesus was probably born in Nazareth, though we don’t know for sure, and he was definitely born before the death of King Herod in 4 B.C., though we can’t say exactly when. Turns out Matthew and Luke, whose Gospels briefly recount said birth, were highly influenced by culture and myth, and the Bible is a problematic historical source. Who knew?!

If Messrs. Forbes, Bowler and Vermes reveal that Christmas is the synthesis of pagan ritual, religious and political mythmaking, and capitalist commerce—and has been for around 2,000 years—in Family Guy: Peter Griffin’s Guide to the Holidays, we discover that even the edgiest of equal-opportunity offenders can’t write a Christmas book without Saturnalia (the pre-Christmas of ancient Rome), Yule logs, Dickens and Santa’s milk and cookies. But the Family Guy’s rip-roaring descriptions of favorite Christmas songs and TV specials are more entertaining than the lists of movies and music in Santa Claus: A Biography. Who wouldn’t prefer KISS Saves Santa and the Young Adults rocking “Christmas in Japan in July” to yet another rerun of Miracle on 34th Street and Mel Tormé warbling “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”?

With more of the same, and a lot more of everything, comes Caroline Kennedy’s anthology, A Family Christmas. It’s got “Twas the night before Christmas,” “Is there a Santa Claus? (Yes, Virginia)” and lyrics for all the carols, spiced up (like a good eggnog) with Garrison Keillor, David Sedaris and, wait a minute, is that Run DMC? Caroline goes wild!

So what does one do with these books? If I were the Christmassy type, I suppose I’d give them away on Dec. 25. There’s one I’d keep, though: Lemony Snicket’s The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story, featuring trees, lights, candy canes and a runaway potato pancake. Chaos, sour cream and lots of pictures? That’s my kind of holiday.

Rebecca Steinitz is a writer who lives in Arlington, Mass. She can be reached at books@observer.com.

Ms. Seligson wants you to empathize with her, too. She wants you to feel the pain of ill-fitting bra straps digging into tender shoulders, the irritation of stares and catcalls when you wear tight tank tops on sweaty summer streets, the sense of despair when yet another man finds your “five-foot-two hourglass body” irresistible. Oh, wait—maybe that’s not so bad.

Taking to heart—or, perhaps, to breast—the time-honored admonition to write what you know, in Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front, Ms. Seligson sets out to explore not just her own mammary extravaganzas, but our collective fixation on “tits, jugs, knockers, hooters, and rack.”

She visits www.ilovemycleavage.com so you don’t have to; she spends more money on bras than you can shake a saggy boob at; and she throws an occasional glance at the “fried eggs,” “mosquito bites” and “wind socks” of those among us who are not as spectacularly endowed.

The canon of breast literature tends to veer to extremes: earnest feminist histories and nursing handbooks at one end, porn at the other. Ms. Seligson stakes out a middle ground—alas, without pictures. She assures us that “breasts were designed to nourish and nurture,” and she’s dismayed by how many women are unhappy with their breasts, but she’s also as fascinated as the next guy with implants, transvestites and naked women.

She’s at her best when she’s exploring the belly of the b(r)east. On location in L.A., she manages to be both sympathetic and funny in profiles of the creator of Busty Beauties and of plastic surgeon Robert Rey, cable TV’s Dr. 90210. Her pilgrimage to Las Vegas in search of 156MMM dancer Maxi Mounds has an entertaining Waiting for Godot quality, and it’s informative to boot: Who knew that polyprolene string was the implant material of choice for the “macro-boob sorority”?

When Ms. Seligson stays home with Google and her thoughts, she’s less engaging. The chapter on breast terminology is a slog (are we really supposed to believe there’s a woman out there gently tucking her “Volvos” into a little something from Victoria’s Secret?). It’s not her fault that research on the evolutionary origins of big breasts has proven inconclusive, but her observations on that research don’t make it any more compelling.

The contemporary breast is certainly a topic worthy of debate as well as description. Do we show our bra straps today as a revolt against yesterday’s feminism? Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between the widespread availability of porn and the current fashion for big, round (i.e., fake) boobs? Or are such breasts just another luxury consumer good in the era of Gucci, Vuitton and Cristal? Stacked doesn’t tell us.

Susan Seligson has learned to love her breasts, and I say more power to her. But I still wish we’d finally met Maxi Mounds.

Rebecca Steinitz teaches at Lesley University.