This is an updated version of a post I first wrote in 2008.
Holiday shopping season is upon us, and not only do books make wonderful presents (to give and to receive), but books also played a part in shaping my perceptions and expectations of the holidays. I suspect that this is true for many people.
One of the great opening lines in literature is Jo's lament in Louisa May Alcott’s
Little Women: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” Yes, all the way back in 1870, there was no surer way to disappoint a child than not to provide Christmas presents. Thanks to Alcott’s high moral Transcendentalist principles, what the March girls actually do is quit complaining, decide to put their annual one-dollar spending money into presents for their mother instead of treats for themselves, and end up giving away their festive holiday breakfast to an impoverished immigrant family with too many children. Generations of American girls have internalized the lessons in that story.
I can’t remember the name of the children’s book in which the family had a tradition of reading Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol aloud on Christmas Eve, but the idea of such a tradition has stuck with me all these years. I also remember that the youngest boy was in the choir, and there was great tension about whether he would be able to hit the high note in his solo, “Glory to God in the highest,” presumably from Handel’s
Messiah. (He did.) I shouldn’t have been paying attention to Christmas at all as a kid, but my Jewish parents were so afraid we’d feel deprived if we couldn’t participate in the general fuss that we decorated what we facetiously called a “Chanukah bush” and got stockings stuffed with presents on Christmas morning. Today, there’s an abundance of books about Jewish families celebrating Chanukah, including entries featuring Curious George, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Grover, Clifford, and Oy, Santa! But I don’t remember any back then.
In my ecumenical present-day family, we celebrate both holidays. Rather than reading aloud, for many years we watched movies made from the great books already mentioned: Alastair Sim as Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol and the Gillian Armstrong version of
Little Women, which my husband and I both liked in spite of the the terrible miscasting of Winona Ryder as Jo. At my forty-fifth college reunion, I learned that a friend and her family read Dylan Thomas’s
A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud every year. So I know that the tradition of holiday reading survived into the new millennium.
Even today, no gift list in our family is complete unless it includes at least one book. In 2008, I said I wasn't happy unless there was at least one fat hardcover by a favorite mystery author that I wouldn’t have bought for myself under the tree, so I can curl up on the couch with it at some time during the long, lazy day. Now, I'll happily take an Amazon gift certificate so I can gobble up a whole series and binge on it on my Kindle. In 2008, books were the present of choice for my stepdaughter and her husband, who live in London, because we could order just what they wanted from their amazon.co.uk wish lists and have them shipped free. These days, we send money, and some of it still goes for books.
One of the great shopping pleasures these days is buying books for my granddaughters. Talk about books I’d never order for myself! In the 21st century, there are children’s books about everything. On a visit in 2008, the almost-two-year-old had me read her one entitled
It’s Potty Time, with separate illustrated editions for boys and girls, and it’s only one of dozens on the subject. Last year, she got books about sports marketing and business—her dream career is managing an NFL superstar—and her older sister, who's at Cornell, got books about hikes and excursions around Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region.
What books are on your holiday gift list? What books, if any, shaped your image of how holidays should be?
I sob and weep because nobody gives me books for Christmas; they're all afraid I might already have them.
ReplyDeleteI remember the singer Tommy Makem would often read THE CHILD'S CHRISTMAS in Wales over the holidays -- a beautiful rendition in his Irish accent.
And what about Christmas ghost stories, long a tradition in England? The scholarly M. R. James used to read a new story to his friends and students at Eton and King's each year. Audio versions of those tales are available online.
When Canadian novelist Robertson Davies was the head of a college at the U of Toronto he told a humorous ghost story every year, except in each one he met the ghost of some important figure in Canadian history. They were collected in a book: High Spirits.
DeleteI remember High Spirits but never knew that. A Mixture of Frailties, the third of Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy, was one of my favorite books for many years. There were a couple of memorable Christmas scenes in that one.
DeleteLittle Women, Hans Brinker, A Christmas Carol, as a child; later A Child's Christmas in Wales, No Holly for Miss Quinn (by Miss Read). Absolute must reads still.
ReplyDeleteWe had a vinyl record of Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales, and that's how I still hear it in my mind. He had the all-time most beautiful voice, and he made every line memorable. That list of presents! "...a little crocheted nosebag from an aunt, alas, no longer whinnying with us." (Haven't read it or listened in decades, honest. Memorable.)
ReplyDeleteI ALWAYS buy a hardcover mystery for my husband at Christmas! One I want to read too, of course! And give book gift certs from my fave independent bookstore. I was raised by an ardent book-lover. My dad lost his father when he was six, and there was no money for books in his young years. He vowed that - when he grew up - he would buy every book he ever wanted to. I grew up in a house full of books and they are still my treasures.
ReplyDeleteMelodie, you're lucky to have a mystery-reading husband. Mine hasn't read a hardcover mystery since my last hardcover publisher dropped me. On the other hand, he doesn't have a Kindle either. He still reads print, and his preferred reading, history and eclectic nonfiction, probably outweighs mine pound for pound if not in, hmm, emotional value.
ReplyDeleteLiz, you've heard me prattle about my ecumenical family celebrating with a menorah and a tree topped with a Star of David. Inclusiveness was the message I learned.
ReplyDeleteAnd books, oh did we receive books, Jack London, James Oliver Curwood, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H Rider Haggard, and an author with the curious name of Holling C Holling. (He must had had a time filling out forms.) My Aunt Rae made certain we received plastic model kits… I found myself thinking about that today.
Curwood and Holling are new to me. As for H Rider Haggard, I never read the book, but King Solomon's Mines might have been the first movie I ever saw—with my Dad, when I was very young.
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