Christmas Stories

Over the 40 Christmases in my life so far, I find that what stands out most clearly are the books.

In these several decades’ worth of experience, few Christmas gifts have proven to have longer lifespans than the books opened on Christmas morning. I judge books against other gifts that proliferate during the holiday season. Toys given to a child are destined to be outgrown, forgotten, discarded, or, at best, repurposed for a subsequent child. Clothes will inevitably grow worn, threadbare, and, perhaps mercifully, out of style—except, that is, in the case of my cherished Shetland sweaters and Gloverall duffle coats. (Invest in high-quality clothing made on the British Isles—it pays for itself.) As for tech gifts—well, forget about it. Raise your hand if you have ever received a portable DVD player or waited in line, on Black Friday, to make off with a big-screen TV, and if so, whether those items have ended up in the basement, the trash can, or with your favorite charity. 

By contrast, properly chosen and appropriately gifted books are far less subject to disuse, on account of the wisdom they contain, or breakage, on account of the unbeatable sturdiness of their construction. Even children’s books have a way of following their recipients into adulthood without embarrassment or apology: From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to Little Women, who among us does not have a book acquired in youth that has accompanied us for years thereafter? 

As I scrutinize the many bookshelves in my house, my eyes stop on those titles that came into my possession on Christmases of years gone by. Predictably, many of these books are aligned with my interests or obsessions during a given year. Throughout the early 1990s, I used Christmas to accumulate an inordinate number of anthologies of Doonesbury comic strips, including those long out-of-print that had to be procured from secondhand bookshops—a reflection of my early, misspent aspiration to become the next Garry Trudeau. (See this space last week for further details.)

I remember Christmas 1996 as a banner year for my budding book-collecting habit. That year, deep in the throes of my adolescent enthusiasm for Kurt Vonnegut, I received first edition hardcovers of Vonnegut’s 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and his 1979 novel Jailbird, a rather plodding academic treatment of the author titled The Vonnegut Chronicles, and, most gloriously, a book of photos by Vonnegut’s wife, the talented photojournalist Jill Krementz—The Writer’s Desk, in which Krementz not only presented a view of her husband’s workspace but those of countless others of my heroes: John Cheever, John Updike, Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, and so on. I still remember how pleased I was when assessing that haul of books: these volumes, stacked one atop another, satisfied my vision of myself as a writer-in-training.

By 1998, my Christmas literary wish list reflected my accelerating interest in the movies. I requested and received a host of classic cinema books, including Francois Truffaut’s interview book with the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock/Truffaut, and Peter Bogdanovich’s interview book with Orson Welles, This Is Orson Welles. There were subsequent Christmases in which the books I requested and received reflected my sudden fascination with Winston Churchill (the Martin Gilbert biography; The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill, with an introduction by President Nixon; et cetera) and my rightward drift (Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft; Scalia Dissents; et cetera). 

Through it all, my parents good-naturedly indulged me by fulfilling these literary wish lists. I find myself touched that my parents went to the trouble of purchasing volumes they would have surely never selected of their own accord, and that my mother, the appointed gift-wrapper in our family, took the time to prepare them as carefully as she would any other gift. My mother once wondered aloud whether I had asked for Robert K. Massie’s biography of Peter the Great simply because I liked the title. Sometimes, however, my parents selected books on my behalf. In 1996, the year of the Vonnegut bounty, I remember receiving a Modern Library edition of three short works by Truman Capote, including the incomparably lovely A Christmas Memory—a book I would have never asked for but one that they felt I should, perhaps, read. A decade or so later, my mother gave me Essential Manners for Men: What to Do, When to Do It, and Why by Peter Post (progeny of Emily Post). 

I don’t think I especially appreciated either at the time, but I now find that I am far more fascinated in discerning my parents’ hopes for me, through the books they picked out, than in remembering my own hopes for myself, through the books I requested.

I can’t say that I have held onto all of the books I have received for Christmas—I certainly have not kept all of those interminable Doonesbury anthologies—but you can be sure that I still have A Christmas Memory and that book by Peter Post. Yes, it is better to give than to receive, but it also better to receive what someone picks out for you than what you pick out yourself—especially if it’s a book.