Christmas Classics and Magic

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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is almost the template for Christmas stories, and it's been adapted to settings well beyond its native London from Hollywood to the Wild West.  Read the book, and you'll see why.

When you need a contemporary view of Christmas, or maybe just something to balance out some of the more sentimental Christmas shows and ads, try Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris.  He applies his characteristic irreverence to the holiday, the trimmings, and his family. 

There have been holiday miracles, none more surprising than the WWI Christmas Truce where for a few hours the war stopped, and young men fom both sides shared food, sport, and music across No Man's Land.  Truce:  The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy tells the story for children, and Silent Night:  The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub tells it for grownups.

It doesn't matter whether you call it The Night Before Christmas or A Visit from Saint Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore's poem invented the Santa visit.  If you haven't read it lately, it's still a warm and hearty story and will put a smile on  your face.

The Nutcracker wasn't Peter Illich Tchaikovsky's favorite work, but it has become a world-wide part of Christmas.  John Cech retells E.T.A. Hoffman's tale of Clara and her magical nutcracker with his usual charm and wit.  And if you can't get to a live performance this year, sample this Nutcracker or one of the other versions available through the Library District.  Magic, music, a brave heroine, a noble hero, and a wicked Mouse King?  What else could you ask for at the holidays?

The Romps come to New York from Vermont every year to sell Christmas trees on Greenwich Village's Jane Street, and they have become a Christmas fixture in the neighborhood and honorary New Yorkers.  Even hardened New Yorkers can be affected by Christmas as you will see when Billy Romp and Wanda Urbanska tell the family's tale in Christmas on Jane Street:  A True Story.

In 1965 there weren't that many Christmas specials, and nobody thought that A Charlie Brown Christmas would ever be re-broadcast, let alone become a perennial.  It was too low-key.  It had a religious component.  It had a jazz score.  But it also had the Peanuts gang, and was written by Charles Schulz.  It's going a lot stronger than the nay-sayers probably are more than 40 years on.  If  you didn't catch it on the tube, check it out of the library.  If you can't get it in December, check it out in July.  It's that good.

Dr. Seuss wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1957 to object to the commercialization of the holiday, but his protest was made in true Seuss style, and the cantankerous Grinch learned a thing or two about the warmer parts of the holiday from a Who or two.  In 1970, animation director Chuck Jones turned the Grinch's adventures into a half-hour special narrated by Boris Karloff, with songs performed by the uncredited Thurl Ravenscroft who was once the voice of Tony the Tiger.    And in 2000 Jim Carrey starred as the Grinch in a live-action movie version.  See what you think.