You don’t have to be considering putting on a full performance for this collection to come into its own. The hard-hitting satire of The Coming of the Kings, a short script that could form the basis of a week’s work in English and drama at upper key stage 2 or key stage 3, will surprise pupils familiar only with traditional Nativity plays.

Businessman Socrates D Conkhorse, both eyes on the main deal, offers the innkeeper a percentage on the fortune he plans to make when he signs the “miracle worker” with the lines, “A man who can raise the dead! That’s really new!I sign him on at 40 per cent and - phew!”. This should provoke discussion about the commercialisation of Christmas. Two other false kings - the priest and police inspector - satirise narrow-minded views of Jesus as, respectively, breaker of religious rules and political agitator.

The Christmas Play by Clare Bevan and Julie Park (Lion pound;4.99), newly in paperback, is one to spark off post-production amusement in nursery and key stage 1 groups. The short rhyming text and illustration work wittily in tandem. Underneath “Here is the moment of wonder, As Jesus appears in the hay” we see a doll in a box being pushed on to the stage with a broom.

Most primary teachers will be looking for at least one seasonal, end-of-term craft activity. The Usborne Christmas Treasury (Usborne pound;12.99), as well as containing stories and carols, includes a middle section on “Christmas Activities”. Pink coconut mice with red liquorice bootlaces as tails, marzipan ears and silver cakeball eyes look cute and tasty - a perfect Christmas prezzy for grandparents with a rodent phobia. Christmas Cooking (Usborne pound;4.99) contains more easy-to-prepare recipes for those wanting a craft activity to have edible results.

Continuing the rodent theme, a new novel worth considering for reading aloud to upper juniors during the last weeks of term, is The Christmas Rat by Avi (Simon amp; Schuster pound;7.99), a mini-thriller about a boy holed up in a New York apartment at the start of Christmas vacation. The rat exterminator, Anjela Gabrall, represents the Angel Gabriel in an unsettling home-alone story in which the main character, Eric, quickly identifies with the hunted rat.

For younger rodent sympathisers, there’s Angelina’s Christmas by Katharine Holabird, illustrated by Helen Craig (Viking pound;9.99).

Terry Deary promises a Scrooge manual, “a book filled full of the foulest facts you can find on this festive folly”, in Horrible Christmas (Scholastic pound;5.99). It’s a low-priced, large-format hardback presenting the usual Deary mixture of facts, half-facts and fiddle-faddle. It’s all good Christmas annual entertainment, even if some of the information is presented without sufficient embroidery. A literary agent once persuaded me to write a proposal for a biography of Santa Claus, so when Deary states baldly, “The American artist Haddon Sundblom created the idea of red-suited Santa”, my reaction is, “Oh no he didn’t”.

Philip Ardagh, in The Truth About Christmas (Macmillan pound;4.99), a little gift book that will appeal to adults more than children, is more accurate when he attributes this to a false claim made by the Coca-Cola company in 1931.

Ardagh is correct in saying that although there are early pictures of Father Christmas dressed in green, references to his now-traditional red suit date from as early as 1821. These two books together will quickly turn teachers into impressive founts of knowledge on the origins and history of familiar customs, such as mince pies and mistletoe.

In Was That Christmas? by Hilary McKay (Hodder Children’s Books pound;4.99), a delightful picture book (illustrated by Amanda Harvey), “Santa Claus looked just like Santa should” when he visits Bella at play school. But he doesn’t have any reindeer with him. And he doesn’t bring a present for Bella’s cat, Black Jack. Although primarily for pre-school children, this will also appeal to reception and Year 1 groups who have become more familiar with the pattern of preparation (including visits to and from dressed-up Santas) that leads up to Christmas Eve. Which is the point at which The Nutcracker (Chronicle BooksRagged Bears pound;13.99), a handsome gift version that includes a CD of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, begins.

Two other traditional tales for reading aloud on winter afternoons are Mother Holly (North-South pound;9.99), a retelling from Grimm by John Warren Stewig with illustrations by Johanna Westerman, and Baboushka (Lion pound;9.99), retold by Arthur Scholey and illustrated by Helen Cann.

Mother Holly, one of the less frequently recycled Grimm tales, is a story about two stepsisters, one industrious and conscientious, the other lazy and selfish. Stewig has altered the Grimms’ punishment for the lazy sister. Instead of being smothered in tar, she is covered in thorns - “miserable but not impossible to remove”, Stewig explains in his reteller’s note. However, the text retains the bath-scrubbing (“they scrubbed and scrubbed until they had worn out their scrubbing brushes”).

The illustrator, clearly perplexed by this, has Blanche perched in a tub with mother and stepsister picking out the thorns, and not a scrubbing-brush in sight. Such incongruities, worth pointing out to children rather than concealing, are part of the fun of variant retellings.

Michael Thorn is deputy head of Hawkes Farm primary school, Hailsham, East Sussex