By Richard Brookhiser
Sunday, December 24, 2023
Charles Dickens, The Christmas Carol
There is a reason this is a classic. G. K. Chesterton,
who loved Dickens, said Dickens’s strength was that he was a democrat; his
weakness, that he could be a demagogue. He works his readers like a stump
speaker or a stand-up monologuist works his audience. When he is calculating
for effect, he is meretricious; when he feels what he is prompting us to feel,
the effect is as if we had no skin. Bob Cratchit cries at the death (we learn
later, avoided) of his son. So do I, every time.
John Cheever, Christmas Is a Sad Season for
the Poor
Given Cheever’s habits and subjects, this story about a
New York City elevator operator should be compared to a cocktail: stimulating,
warming, with a dash of bitters. Special bonus: a vignette of the
still-not-so-distant past — elevator operators, Irish-American poor.
Anon, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
A 14th-century masterpiece. Arthurian setting, magic,
mystery, sex, shame, comedy. The Middle-English dialect in which it was
written, unlike Chaucer’s, was a linguistic dead end, so it needs to be
translated, and has been numerous times. My favorite is still the first I read,
by Burton Raffel.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blue
Carbuncle
At first the only thing Christmas-y about this, one of
the very best Sherlock Holmes stories, seems to be the time of year in which it
occurs: A stolen jewel appears in the crop of a Christmas goose. But, after
many twists, it becomes a tale of guilt and repentance, with Holmes as secular
priest.
Joseph Brodsky, Nativity Poems
Brodsky (d. 1996, too young) wrote a poem every year at
and about Christmas. As the years passed, they shifted from reflections on his
own life at the moment to meditations on the Nativity. Cool, serious,
appreciative.
And finally:
Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush
Technically a New Year’s poem, though with Christmas
touches. I wrote about it here.
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