{"id":3201,"date":"2013-12-06T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=3201"},"modified":"2016-06-14T10:42:50","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T14:42:50","slug":"do-you-get-in-any-reading-over-the-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2013\/12\/06\/do-you-get-in-any-reading-over-the-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Get In Any Reading Over the Holidays?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I got the idea that I should read “The Chimes,” Charles Dickens’s other famous Christmas story. I found a free digital edition on Project Gutenberg<\/a>, downloaded it to my iPad, and started reading one afternoon. I hadn’t made it very far in when I was distracted by a phone call, and then I remembered a bunch of other reading I had to do for work—the upshot being that I didn’t came back to “The Chimes” until the following December. Didn’t finish it that year, either, although I made it further than the previous effort. Last year, I almost reached the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n

My adult holiday traditions, such as they are, just haven’t involved reading—and the reasons for that are rooted in the one exception that I can remember. At the end of my first semester in college, I was called home the night before final exams when my father’s truck slid off an icy patch of road and into a tree. He died the next day, and that holiday season became a long cycle of grief and frustration.<\/p>\n

\"ChroniclesI was still sharing a bedroom with my brother (when I was home, anyway); at some point, I hit upon his boxed set of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia<\/i>. I’d never read the series—as a teenager, I’d been more into science fiction than fantasy—but I needed a distraction, so I opened The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe<\/i> and began reading. In retrospect, a story about young children torn from their parents who find refuge in a magical kingdom seems a bit on the nose. At the time, though, Aslan was just what I needed—and even though I read all seven books before it was time to go back to school, I confess Aslan rising off the table is my only firm memory from any of it. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Because the greater distraction during that dark month turned out to be Christmas movies. Amazingly, I had managed to reach the age of 18 without ever seeing the original Miracle on 34th Street<\/i>, and I was so starved for any sort of joy that I found myself laughing gleefully throughout. I had seen It’s a Wonderful Life<\/i> a few times, but that year its not-so-subtle dark undercurrents resonated more strongly with me. And, for nearly four hours, I could lose myself in the spectacle of The Greatest Story Ever Told<\/i>.<\/p>\n

(Then there was Kelly’s Heroes<\/i>, a World War II heist picture starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, and Donald Sutherland that’s just so weird I became instantly engrossed. It’s still one of my all-time favorites.)<\/p>\n

It’s the films that have become part of my holiday canon. As you might imagine, this time of the year can still be difficult, and the Christmas movies are like a comforting blanket, or a magnet pulling me back to the more festive aspects of the season. Apart from A Christmas Story<\/i>, though, the secular films have fallen by the wayside, and it’s the Jesus pictures I make a point of tracking down each December. I still love The Greatest Story Ever Told<\/i>, but it’s not always easy to find on TV, and in the meantime, I’ve discovered Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings<\/i>, in which the people around Jesus—including Robert Ryan as John the Baptist, Rip Torn as Judas, and Ron Randell as a Roman centurion in the service of Herod and Pilate—prove to be even more fascinating.<\/p>\n

So that’s on my calendar for Christmas Day. (And this year, TCM’s also showing The Big Fisherman<\/i>, with Howard Keel as Peter! I’ve never seen it before; can’t wait.) And who knows? Maybe between now and then, I’ll have another go at “The Chimes.”<\/p>\n

in response to “Do You Get In Any Reading Over the Holidays?<\/a>”<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I got the idea that I should read “The Chimes,” Charles Dickens’s other famous Christmas story. I found a free digital edition on Project Gutenberg, downloaded it to my iPad, and started reading one afternoon. I hadn’t made it very far in when I was distracted by a phone call, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[705,496,706,707,708],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3201"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3903,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201\/revisions\/3903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}