Sharing the tales of Christmas

Remember when Christmas music and lighted trees began appearing after Thanksgiving? Now it’s not uncommon to hear Christmas songs playing while ghosts and goblins are still floating about as retailers are anxious to encourage their shoppers to begin thinking about the gift giving aspect of the Christmas and Hanukah holidays.

We don’t really feel, and perhaps smell, the spirit of this enchanting season or begin the shopping, baking, cooking, and decorating until after Thanksgiving. Then the festive lights are switched on, the temperature drops, there is the first snow of the season and lines get much longer at the post office.

I have been thinking about the many Christmas books and stories I enjoy re-reading, year after year.

The first, of course, is Donald Hall’s book “Christmas at Eagle Pond.” In the story, young Donald, recalls spending the Christmas of 1940 with his grandparents at their farm in Wilmont, New Hampshire. It is a charming story with a twist, and I’m not going to reveal the secret. After Hall’s death, a group of people got together to purchase the farm and raise the funds to preserve it. There are photographs of the farm and more about Donald Hall and his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, at eaglepond.com.

A few years ago, I bought a book entitled “Christmas Stories” (Everyman’s Pocket Classics, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, London, Toronto, 2007) at Hatchards Bookshop on Piccadilly in London. I’m pulled like a magnet into this shop, one of the oldest bookshops in the United Kingdom. The short stories gathered in “Christmas Stories” are by well-known authors, including Charles Dickens, Willa Cather, Truman Capote, and John Updike, among many others.

I always take the book down from the shelf at the beginning of the holiday season. One of my favorite stories is Vladimir Nabokov’s, “Christmas.” A father has returned to his summer home from St. Petersburgh on Christmas Eve the year of his young son’s death. Filled with grief and alone with just a caretaker in the frigid cottage, surrounded by snowdrifts and windows thick with frost, the man discovers a biscuit tin with a cocoon in what had been his son’s room. He carries it with him into the warmth of the living room. On Christmas morning hearing a snap he finds an Atticus moth has burst from the chrysalid.

“And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom during their hooked foretips took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing almost human happiness.”

“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, was first recorded in 1952. Like Hall’s Christmas story, it is an anecdotal reminiscence of Christmas through the lens of a young boy, portraying a nostalgic and simpler time. It is one of Thomas' most popular works and as a narrative verse that can be read at a holiday dinner.

Of course, there is always Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.” Starting in 2013, Charles Dickens’ great, great grandson started touring a one-man performance of “A Christmas Carol” in the U.S., bringing the show across the pond from the United Kingdom.

One reading over the years was at the Mountain View House in Whitefield. I was asked to pick him up in Concord and drive him through the Notch to the hotel. Snow from the night before coated trees like crystalized ice sculptures. Driving through Franconia and Bretton Woods couldn’t have been more enchanting.

Charles Dickens visited New Hampshire in 1867, after the Civil War, enticed by his exclusive American publisher, James T. Field who lived in Portsmouth. It was Dickens’ second trip to the U.S. Field thought this would give him another opportunity to see the country.

Yes, there are the lights, the cookies and the packages, then there are the stories. Stories that stir our memories and encourage us to begin thinking about the possibilities and memories we will experience and discover in a new year.

As always, I encourage you to visit Innisfree bookshops in Meredith and Laconia — as well as all the wonderful libraries in the Lakes Region.

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Elizabeth Howard is the host of the Short Fuse Podcast, found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or through the Arts Fuse. Her career intersects journalism, marketing, and communications. “Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back,” a book she edited, was published in May 2016. She is the author of “A Day with Bonefish Joe,” a children’s book, published by David R. Godine. You can send her a note at: eh@elizabethhoward.com.