JOY ALONG THE WAY: THE JOY OF CHRISTMAS READING

In addition to enjoying the city's merry twinkling lights of Christmas, hearing the carols again, exchanging greetings, smelling the Christmas odors and eating the Christmas food, I have a further dimension of enjoyment. It is re-reading my collection of favorite seasonal stories. Although I know them all, almost by heart, I love to re-read them, to recapture the delight I experienced when first reading them, to mentally and emotionally project myself inside the story as an unseen, silent character, but nonetheless to be there, experiencing, witnessing.

Some of the stories are not bona fide Christmas stories, yet to me they provide the holiday atmosphere.

I pluck a blue bound book from a lower shelf, and even before the book is opened to "Snowbound," I'm reciting to myself, "The sun that brief December day rose cheerless over hills of gray, and darkly circled gave at noon a sadder light than waning moon."

I insert myself into such a day, even though the outside thermometer stands at sixty. But, for the proper atmosphere, I like a Christmas reading day where, "A chill no coat, however stout, of homespun stuff could quite keep out."

These Whittier words invite me into Mrs. Peerybingle's cozy kitchen by way of Dickens' "The Cricket on the Hearth," where the little Dutch clock is garnering the moments and the cricket and the kettle are having a contest to see which can make the more cheerful noise. Oh, it is pleasant in Mrs. Peerybingle's kitchen with the crackling open fire and the candle in the window. I'm warm and contented in this kitchen. I may pause in my reading to set my own kettle on the stove to enjoy a simmering sound.

I seldom get to the end of this Dickens' story before I'm inclined to re-enter the kitchen of Truman Capote's, "A Christmas Memory." Here a grown woman-child and her little cousin, Buddy, are planning the annual fruitcakes they make for people who have been kind to them during the year. Because of their mental slowness, these two have been relegated to the back rooms of the house which is otherwise well populated.

First, I go out with them to gather pecans, only in my mind, they are black walnuts since I've never gathered pecans. I mentally gather along a slope of an Ozark mountain. They gather in the deep south. I watch as, back home, they pour out the coins they have saved during the year. Neither can count very well, but it appears they have $12.73. With this they must purchase cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla, canned pineapple, raisins and walnuts and whisky, flour, butter, many eggs, and spices. They aim to make 30 fruitcakes. The whisky is given to them by an old Indian in exchange for a fruitcake. I find myself wishing I could give them something too. Eggs? Butter? Pineapple?

The story was copyrighted in 1956. Maybe you could buy all the above for $12.73. Anyway, the story makes the reader want to give, even though it may be such a little thing as a can of cinnamon or six eggs. Such gifts would have been enormously appreciated in that kitchen just as a little Teddy Bear or flannelette gown would be for someone in 1994.

I re-visit Tiny Tim's kitchen and re-open "The Littlest Angel's" box of worldly possessions. I string popcorn, sleigh ride, ice skate, examine the ice crystals with the rollicking family of Paradise Farm in Robert Tristman Coffin's "Christmas in Maine.

I sit before their wide fireplace, hugging my knees and hearing the wind outside going its round among the snowy pines (my cedars) and listen to the stories being told (my re-reading) until they become a part of the "old winds of the world and the motion of the bright stars."

And to wrap all the stories together and give them meaning, at the end of the reading session I go with the shepherds to the old stable and kneel before the Christ Child.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosely is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.