GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE - on writing stories for the Christmas season © Bruce Iserman More than 20 years ago I wrote a short story with a clear Christmas theme, and decided to share it with family and a very few close friends. Around the same time, I took a book art course (taught by one of my ex-students) and learned the rudiments of book binding. So the tradition began of my hand-folded, pressed, cut, sewn and glued Christmas chapbooks. Year after year I bound my stories in beautiful cover papers from the Orient and the Pacific. Year after year, the expanding circle of family and friends who received them expressed their appreciation. I was on to something. I continue to share my stories annually; and now, with my collection The Goodwife=s Soup, I hope to reach a wider audience. It is my on-going challenge to produce a story worthy of sharing each year. Christmas stories impose on the writer one unalterable limitation: the story must have a happy ending. Christmas stories must not be downers. So it is acceptable for a story to be uplifting, inspirational or heart-warming, but unacceptable for it to be completely off-putting, negative or tastelessly mocking.
Even a Christmas tale may be dark and dramatic - as long as it gives us what we want to hear about such seasonal themes as family, friendship, reunion, generosity, social responsibility, sacrifice, love and renewal. I believe that one over-arching theme unites all these seasonal messages, and that master theme is positive transformation, the change for the better. Take a look at three classic stories to see how this theme of transformation is successfully expressed. No Christmas story is more famous or more universally loved than A Christmas Carol. Everyone knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his visitations on Christmas Eve by his former business partner Jacob Marley’s ghost, and the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. There can be no more clear transformation for the better than that of the nasty old skinflint into a decent and generous man. We love this story because in it we watch a man=s soul being saved before our eyes. Dickens, always the master of overwrought description, portrays the unregenerate Scrooge as a monster: AThe cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait... A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn=t thaw it one degree at Christmas.@ Children, dogs and even beggars shy away from Scrooge on the street. His character is summed up by his immortal response to his nephew=s wish of a merry Christmas: ABah! Humbug!@ After his journeys through his own lonely past, dismal present and empty future, Scrooge awakens on Christmas day quite literally a new man. He dances, capers and laughs uncontrollably. A>I don=t know anything. I=m quite a baby. Never mind. I don=t care. I=d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!=@ Ebenezer Scrooge is born again. What were the lessons that Scrooge learned, that so changed him? They are summed up at the beginning of the story by Marley=s ghost. He is much like Scrooge, both men consumed by greed. When Scrooge compliments the ghost on having been Aa good man of business,@ Marley replies, A>Business! ... Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.=@ This is the message of social responsibility, the lesson of the Golden Rule - it is the very essence of Christmas and Christianity.
Is A Christmas Carol overly sentimental? No - Scrooge=s gradual personal growth as a decent human being doesn=t seem over-done. The trappings of sentimentality are certainly there, in the humble but happy Cratchit family with its angelic and apparently doomed youngest child, the crippled Tiny Tim. But when Scrooge is shown by the Ghost of Christmas Future the grief of the family, and of the boy=s father Bob Cratchit in particular, at Tiny Tim=s death, that grief rings true: AThere was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face.@ Of course, that vision is only of what might come to pass, and the awakened and transformed Scrooge rescues the Cratchits from their destitution, and Tiny Tim lives on. But what happens when charity does not come to the rescue, what then is the fate of the poor child? A popular fairy tale told by Hans Christian Anderson, AThe Little Match Girl,@ gives us a story so grim and sad that on the surface, it shouldn=t rightly be considered a seasonal story at all. It is simply told. A little beggar girl has been trying to sell matches without any success all day on New Year=s Eve. She is barefoot in the snow, and everyone who passes her by ignores her. If she goes home without having made some money, her father will beat her. So after nightfall, she huddles against a building, and lights her matches one by one for whatever meagre warmth they can provide. In the light of one match, she sees a vision of a warm stove; in the next, a holiday table groaning with food; and in the third, a beautiful Christmas tree whose lights become the stars above. She sees a falling star, and remembers her dead grandmother, the only person who ever loved her, telling her that a falling star means a soul has gone to heaven. She strikes another match, and there is her grandmother before her. The child lights all of the remaining matches and begs Grandmother to take her away. AShe took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety - they were with God.@ The next day, her frozen body is found, and no one expresses any shock or sympathy. They only look upon the burned matches and say, AShe wanted to warm herself.@
In this story, there is no sanitizing of the child=s death. It=s perfectly horrible, and nobody cares. All the little girl wants is warmth, food, shelter - love. In this life, all are denied her. The brief flare of each match is the fragile flame of her existence. No benefactor, no transformed Scrooge, comes to save the child. Yet the story is positive in at least two ways. First it reaffirms the Christian message that heaven is for everyone, not just for the wealthy - in fact, perhaps least for the wealthy. Second, as we contemplate the callousness of the little girl=s society, we are meant to ask ourselves the crucial question: would we have walked past that child, barefoot and freezing on the last day of the year? Would we have stopped and taken her in, clothed and fed her? The final story challenges the reader in a different way. It is O. Henry’s holiday classic, AGifts of the Magi@. It is the turn of the 20th century in New York City, and a young couple, Jim and Della, are struggling to make ends meet on Jim=s meagre salary. They live in a run-down little flat. It is Christmas Eve, and Della wants to buy her husband a beautiful fob chain to go with the family heirloom gold watch that is his most prized possession. But she has practically no money, so she decides to sacrifice her own most precious thing: her long, lustrous hair. Della sells her hair and buys the fob chain. When Jim gets home from work, he is stupefied by what she has done, because he has pawned the watch to buy his love a pair of tortoise shell combs for her hair. The conclusion of this story is a tour de force of writing, and deserves to be quoted in full:
The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas gifts. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were of the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. Always a droll writer, O. Henry couldn=t resist the very good joke about the magi=s gifts being exchangeable (what if two of them had brought baby Jesus frankincense?). Leaving that aside, the final three sentences challenge readers to unravel his meaning. How exactly are Jim and Della wise; why would he consider them to be the real magi? The answer, of course, lies in true love, which will sacrifice everything for the beloved. Neither the hair nor the watch, the combs nor the fob chain, matter in the slightest: they are symbols of love. It is the gift of love that these Afoolish children@ give to each other, that matters. Without love, a gift is but a paltry thing; with love, nothing else matters. In the end, we must love each other. Then we too will be transformed; we will be the magi. Each of the three stories deals with transformation, and with those expansive, noble and decent qualities that we equate with all that is good in humanity. The greatest challenge of all for any author who seeks to add further to the canon of stories of Christmas and the New Year, is to avoid predictability, unoriginality and imitation. A tall order indeed. Yet so long as we continue to believe that it is indeed possible for the miser to become charitable, for the hand of goodness to stretch out, and for love to conquer always, we will gather together to tell each other such stories. And say, in one voice and without irony, along with Tiny Tim, AGod bless Us, Every One.@
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