When your car has just been repossessed, and you don’t know where you can scare up the rent, getting a second job is a very obvious thing to do. A second job as a Christmas coordinator is not so obvious. Especially for Merry Hopper. Abandoned by her parents on Christmas Day, she had never experienced…
Tag: Christmas
The Founder of the Time
I have been continuing my read of Christmas Books of Dickens. There is a genre of Christmas entertainment – songs, movies, stories – that has been called “Christmas bubblegum”: high on sugar, low on substance. Dickens’ stories, for all their sentiment, could never be classed in it. They have too much sadness, and too much…
Christmas Books of Dickens
Two nights ago, in honor of the season, I picked up Christmas Books of Dickens, a volume I bought at my library’s fall book sale. The first story was, of course, A Christmas Carol. I last read A Christmas Carol a year or two ago, and reading it again I was struck anew by what…
The Pardon of Christmas
Here is a Christmas poem by G. K. Chesterton. Comments at the end. The Pardon of Christmas Roofed in with the snows of December It returns, it is left to us yet —A day: with one day to remember. —A day: with long days to forget. Undeterred, recurring, soft-footed It comes down o’er the world,…
In Defense of a Commercial Racket
Recently, I’ve been having a recurring thought: Christmas is coming. This is followed by another recurring thought: I have to start Christmas shopping. Here I am, victim of the commercial racket they’ve made of Christmas. Every year we hear about the commercialization of Christmas. It’s practically a Yuletide tradition. The sentiment is entrenched in the…