I usually read some Christmas-related stories during December. Sometimes it’s to help feel the season; sometimes simply to see how others are writing about Christmas. One year I focused on Christmas romance novellas, and I must have read 20 of them.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is an old standby. Last year, I read the TS Poetry edition of the 1843 work, introduced by Megan Willome. This year, I read the facsimile edition published by the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It’s about as close as you can get to the original edition without having to spend a fortune on the first edition. It includes the original illustrations by John Leech. If you want to hold and read something very close to what the readers in 1843 experienced, this is it.
I’ve probably read the story a dozen times, and each time I find something new, or almost new. The official title is A Christmas Carol in Prose, A Ghost Story of Christmas. And Dickens meant exactly that – it was both a carol, or song, and a ghost story. To drive home the musical point, he didn’t use the word “chapters” for the five divisions of the book but instead the word “stave.” The British meaning of “stave” is “staff,” or the five lines and four spaces between them (says the Cambridge dictionary) on which musical notes are written. Dickens was writing a song, a song that was also a ghost story.
The Dickens Museum edition is a joy, and it’s reasonably priced (and you can’t buy it on Amazon, unless you find a used copy somewhere).
A second story I read this year was On Christmas Day. It is a longish short story jointly published by Spitalfields Life and Burley Fisher Books. The editor (and, in this case, the author) doesn’t publicly disclose his name, simply calling himself “The Gentle Author.”
This edition is more life a poetry pamphlet or chapbook in design. It includes two delightful woodcuts of a snowy landscape by Reynolds Stone (1909-1979). It’s a story of a young boy, an only child, traveling with his parents to visit his maternal grandmother for Christmas. His parents consider the visit something of an ordeal and are filled with a palpable dread. The grandmother is quite the character.
The story has echoes of Dickens, Dylan Thomas and his A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and George Mackay Brown and his Christmas Stories. I was also reminded of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, to add an American connection. The Gentle Author’s story is a bittersweet one, in which the last surviving descendant on both sides of the family remembers a particular Christmas. (And like the Dickens facsimile edition, this one is only available through the Spitalfields Life link.)
The third and final story I read was Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. I found it at the sale shop at the Kirkwood Public Library; a first edition, it was published in 2001and looks brand new. Years ago, I’d been a Grisham fan, devouring his legal thrillers like A Time to Kill, The Client, and The Pelican Brief. I didn’t know he’d written a Christmas story.
Skipping Christmas is something decidedly different. Luther and Nora Krank, who live on Hemlock Avenue in a suburb of any city, see their daughter off to Peru for work with the Peace Corps. Luther calculates how much they spend each year on Christmas, some $6,100, and he suggests that they skip Christmas altogether and use half of that money for a Caribbean cruise. Nora finally agrees.
Like all firm resolutions, skipping Christmas is easier said than done. They must contend with neighbors, stationers and other merchants, co-workers, and everyone else who has a vested personal or financial interest in Christmas. Cultural and commercial Christmas keeps intruding on their plans, and the story becomes a test to see how long they can hold out. And what the final straw might be.
It's a simple, intriguing story, but it lacks a sympathetic character, even a minor one. Luther is not surnamed “Krank” for nothing, and even the street name of Hemlock is not only a tree but a poison. I think I understand why the story is not well-known.
Do you read any stories or novels for Christmas, or have any particular favorites?
Top photograph by Roberto Nickson via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Some Monday Readings
The Weird and Wild Mind of Charles Williams – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.
Shane Skull: A Christmas Fairy Tale – Martin Shaw at The House of Beast & Vines.
A Prayer After the Moon Landing – Douglas Murray at The Free Press on the poem by W.H. Auden.
2 comments:
I read Skipping Christmas several years ago. It was made into a movie and I think it was called The Kranks. I normally read a number of devotional Christmas books beginning in November to help me prepare for Christmas.
I looked it up. It was called "Christmas with he Kranks" (2004). It starred Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Dan Ackroyd. Who'd have thought it? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388419/
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