Thought I would search out a few different readings for you over the Christmas period, but still with a Christassy feel.
First up, how about a dash of JRR Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters.
Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for Tolkien’s children. Inside would be a letter in spidery handwriting and a beautiful coloured drawing or sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house! Sometimes the Polar Bear would scrawl a note, and sometimes Ilbereth the Elf would write in his elegant flowing script, adding yet more life and humor to the stories.
Next, Washington Irving’s The Christmas Sketches.
Dickens once remarked, ‘I do not go to bed two nights out of seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs to bed with me.’ Irving’s old-style oratories are as sugary-sweet and pleasing as a tankard of heavily fortified mulled wine. In ‘The Stage Coach’, the Christmas break was such that: “It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of pleasure of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to perform during their six weeks’ emancipation from the abhorred thraldom of book, birch, and pedagogue.”
In ‘Christmas Eve’, we catch a glimpse of old games we might struggle to know these days, even those of us who grew up when ‘games’ on Christmas Day involved people and not screens – ‘shoot the wild mare’, ‘hot cockles’, ‘steal the white loaf’, ‘snapdragon’.
And, Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather.
IT’S THE NIGHT BEFORE HOGSWATCH. The stockings are hanging ready, the sherry and pies are waiting by the fireplace – but where is the jolly fat man with his sack? Why is Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’? Susan the gothic governess has got to sort it out by morning, otherwise there won’t be a morning. The 20th Discworld novel is a festive feast of darkness and Death (but with jolly robins and tinsel too). As they say: ‘You’d better watch out…’
Lastly, for now, Adalbert Stifter, Rock Crystal.
Rock Crystal contains one of the best descriptions of a frozen landscape you’re likely to encounter in any book, as well as the most affecting Christmas miracle in world literature. Author Adam Kirsch called it a ‘parable of frightening depth.’ Two children―Conrad and his little sister, Sanna―set out from their village high up in the Alps to visit their grandparents in the neighbouring valley. It is the day before Christmas but the weather is mild, though of course night falls early in December and the children are warned not to linger. The grandparents welcome the children with presents and pack them off with kisses. Then snow begins to fall, ever more thickly and steadily. Undaunted, the children press on, only to take a wrong turn. The snow rises higher and higher, time passes: it is deep night when the sky clears and Conrad and Sanna discover themselves out on a glacier, terrifying and beautiful, the heart of the void. Adalbert Stifter’s tale, beautifully translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore, explores what can be found between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day―or on any night of the year. (Description courtesy of Amazon UK books).
So, enjoy your Christmas reading whatever it is. Personally, I shall be pulling out those old comic annuals of yesteryear and becoming an eight-year-old again.
Oh, okay, here’s the Star Trek team ready for the festivities…
Jamie Neve 