Viewing entries tagged with 'christmas'
Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol
Christmas will be here sooner than I expect. I know that, but I haven't started Christmas shopping yet; my Christmas tree and all the lights and other decorations are still in storage; Christmas parties are starting to fill up my schedule but I haven't given them much thought. But I did read a book I try to read every year around this time—Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the subject of my latest recommendation. I hope you get a chance this Christmas to pick up this wonderful little book and allow its story to haunt you and infect you with its laughter and good-humour.
Party Kris Kringle
I don't know whether it's a wider cultural shift or simply that my friends and I are getting older, but a number of years ago I noticed that many people in my life were getting fed up with the traditions our society has established around Christmas gift-giving. I had long-standing uneasy feelings about those traditions as well, since they seemed perfectly designed to upset as many people as possible: the pressure to get the "perfect" gift, the growing number of friends and family (a blessing in any life) resulting in a growing number of hours and days and weeks spent shopping among the maddening crowds, the hurt feelings when one person surprises another with a gift but the recipient never even thought of getting one for them; the friend who spent half their paycheque or a lot of time and effort on a gift for someone they consider really special, but gets in return the same gift that person has given to all their friends.