Christmas Comes but Once a Year: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Christmas Comes but Once a Year, credited to John Leighton, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Christmas Comes but Once a Year (1850), by Luke Limner, pseudonym of the illustrator John Leighton. Read by Ruth Golding. A Christmas tale of John Brown's ghastly family (suburban snobs), Captain Bonaventure de Camp and his equally awful brood (a dubious crew), and poor Soavo Spohf, organist of St. Stiff the Martyr, gifted in musical ability but not blessed in looks or love. No-one could call this a great work of literature, but it definitely raises a few chuckles and it also offers a fascinating glimpse into Christmas festivities and social mores in well-to-do households in the mid-19th century. (Introduction by Ruth Golding) Details of the source text may be found on the LibriVox catalogue page for this item.

Recording facts

• Recording title: Christmas Comes but Once a Year
• Author credits: John Leighton
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 3:09:33

Catalogue topics

• humor
• humour
• Christmas
• Victorian
• family
• games
• dances
• holiday

Track guide

1. Section 1 — 29:24
2. Section 2 — 18:11
3. Section 3 — 16:58
4. Section 4 — 23:56
5. Section 5 — 25:14
6. Section 6 — 26:17
7. Section 7 — 29:19
8. Section 8 — 20:16

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.