In December, our holiday books come out from their home on the shelf in my room; like the miracles and magic they contain in their pages, they, too, are special and command their own space.
We glance at their covers all year, pulling out one or two on occasion, and look forward to the holidays with them.
In December, we lay aside the Magic Treehouse and the Bailey School Kids books I read each night to my 6-year-old, Monkey — the books my 12-year-old, Middle, is too mature for on her own, but that soothe her when she curls up to listen.
The Boychild, at 17, no longer joins us for regular story times, but he does share commentary on particular favorites when he finds us reading about Jack and Annie, or third-grade-teacher vampires.
In December, though, Boychild squeezes his fully-grown self into my crowded bed so we can pore over “Do You See What I See?” by Arden and David Mead, as we have since he was an only child.
The I Spy-style book offers Advent stories for children, with two days allotted to each photograph that is packed with holiday decorations, angels, Bibles, and rubber ducks. When Boychild was young, we read the book daily throughout Advent. Now, with busy school lives, we try to keep up every two or three days.
The children have the book memorized.
“It’s my turn to find the five Bibles,” says Monkey.
“OK, but I get to find the crown,” Middle replies.
“Can you be quiet and hurry up?” asks Boychild. He always has homework to finish, and he may still resent sharing.
We all know where the crown is, and where the Bibles are — sometimes, we’ve pointed them out the day before. The kids don’t care. We all find every last thing we can, and point out favorite items we haven’t seen since the previous year.
Then, our five minutes of December magic fades — Boychild leaves; Middle, who was squished, says, “Good riddance”; and Monkey begs to pick the next December book from the pile on the bed.
Often, before the first New York snow, we pull out “Christmas Magic” by Michael Garland. Sometimes, Boychild peeks from the doorway to glance at the amazing artwork. We read it for the sweet story, too: a girl builds a magical snowwoman on Christmas Eve while a new friend moves in next door. The girl awakens during the night to find that inanimate objects have come alive, and creatures have become magical:
“Pets singing? Mice baking? What could be next?” Emily giggled. “This Christmas Eve really is different!”
My girls and I read through other favorites, like Richard Scarry’s “Christmas Mice,” with its wonderful old-fashioned designs; Jane O’Connor’s “Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas,” with a little girl’s exuberance for all things beautiful that spreads to her holiday; and Karma Wilson’s “Bear Stays Up for Christmas,” in which the woodland creatures of Wilson’s series craft homemade gifts and share hot tea.
“Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah,” by Linda Glaser and illustrated by Nancy Cote, provides a recipe for traditional potato latkes, in the book published by Scholastic Inc.
Before December matures, we pull out “Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah” by Linda Glaser. A little girl who looks like Monkey spills potatoes, flour, and eggs all over the house of her neighbor, Mrs. Greenberg, as she haphazardly tries to make latkes. Before the first candle is lit, poor Mrs. Greenberg is exhausted, but still there are no latkes for Hanukkah.
After we read the book, the only Hanukkah song I know — “Ocho Kandelikas,” in Ladino, a Sephardic-inspired Spanish, no less — gets stuck in my head. The tune is probably from another popular song; it isn’t the more widely known song by Flory Jagoda, but one a Mexican folk singer attached to similar lyrics. I sing and hum it for days, wishing I could find the homemade cassette tape my mother-in-law gave me with the song when Boychild was a baby. If I could just hear it one more time I’m sure I would get the earworm out of my head. My singing drives the girls crazy, but inspires them to choose Mrs. Greenberg’s story for several nights. The messes, however, do not inspire me to make latkes.
When the girls are in a good mood, and we’re not too tired, I sometimes pull out the chapter book “December Secrets” by Patricia Reilly Giff. Over a few nights, we read of Emily, a schoolgirl whose class chooses secret pals for kind acts, not gifts. Emily is assigned to Jill, a stout girl who wears loopy ribbons in her hair.
The class learns about Hannukah and Christmas (but not Kwanzaa, which was not popularly celebrated in 1984), and how to be a friend. Emily moves from wanting to change Jill to make her “normal” to actually liking Jill for who she is. The book is nice, not too preachy, and long enough to send little ones off to sleep when a mom just can’t read Laura Numeroff’s “If You Take a Mouse to the Movies” one more time.
Only once has Middle let me read Barbara Robinson’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” and that was before Monkey was born. I keep the book on the shelf and pull it out for myself every few years, with a fondness for Loretta Swit, who performed in the televised version of the book long ago.
The story, while dated, tells of a family of neglected urchins who join a Christmas pageant and teach adults how to truly show love. Frankincense and myrrh? Those aren’t gifts for a king! The Herdman children donate food from their charity basket to the baby Jesus:
“As far as I’m concerned,” the narrator concludes, “Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman — sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby. And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham.
“And I thought about the Angel of the Lord — Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us, everywhere:
“ ‘Hey! Unto you a child is born!’ ”
Middle, as a pre-schooler, was not one to sit for a story in the middle of the day, but she had asked me to read the book, so I read chapter by chapter, all the while looking to see if she were bored and ready to move to another activity; she sat entranced before me, taking in every word, and looking over the occasional sketch.
Her favorite December story now is “The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey” by Susan Wojciechowski. The dust jacket is worn and frayed; the book was a gift from my beloved friend and editor for Boychild’s first Christmas. The phrasing in the story has become a part of our family’s language:
“Mr. Toomey, excuse me, may I ask a question?” young Thomas says to Mr. Toomey as the woodcarver re-creates a lost crèche for the boy and his widowed mother who have settled in Toomey’s pioneer town. “That is a beautiful cow, the most beautiful cow I have ever seen, but it’s not right. My cow looked proud.”
As the boy apprentices with the woodcarver, he makes his way into the man’s heart; a widower whose infant also died, Toomey finds Christmas to be “pish-posh,” but recovers from his grief as he carves the Nativity and comes to know Thomas and his mother.
The picture book is long, but the children beg me to read it. How could I refuse? Boychild used to plead, too, but now he is older and occupied; I shall read until the girls no longer beg.
Sometimes, after we read the Advent book, Boychild will stay to hear with us Hilary Knight’s “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” We follow the enchanting story, told in pictures to the lyrics of the song, of Benjamin Bear and his love, Bedelia, as Benjamin showers her with daily gifts until, at last, there are enough geese, pears, and dancers to hold a Christmas Fair.
A traditional arrangement of the music is printed on the cover page, and, after we take in every single detail of the artwork, Monkey will sing to us, pretending to read the notes.
On other nights, we read about a different bear, who bakes cakes with his mother and delivers them, all by himself, to his neighbors, in Amy Hest’s “You Can Do It, Sam.” The book is a story of giving and winter, not necessarily of Christmas. The colorful illustrations by Anita Jeram enhance the simple story, and leave us wanting to crawl out of bed for cookies and cocoa.
The baker Van Amsterdam decorates Saint Nicholas cookies in this illustration by Wendy Edelson in “The Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale,” by Aaron Shepard, published by Aladdin Paperbacks.
Before we do, we read Aaron Shepard’s “The Baker’s Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale.” The story is set in Albany, and we love its Dutch roots as much as we love its illustrations by Wendy Edelson. By the time we turn the last page, we are ready to add gingerbread men to our late-night snack.
Eating is a big theme in our holiday books — in “Too Many Tamales” by Gary Soto, we read about little Maria who takes her mother’s ring and then worries that she lost it in the dough for tamales, a traditional Christmas food in Mexico. She and her cousins make themselves sick by eating all the tamales in search of the ring.
I point out to my girls how dressed up the characters are on Christmas Eve, when families in Mexico celebrate, and remind them of their own Abuelita — or “Owl-ita,” as Monkey calls her grandmother — who visits each year and dresses for Christmas Eve dinner.
We always put tamales on the menu after reading this, but the girls won’t eat Christmassy sweet tamales with raisins, only savory tamales with cheese and chiles.
Young Ceci and her mother go shopping for a piñata for a posada, a celebratory event marking the progression of Joseph and Mary as they search for room at the inn in “Nine Days to Christmas: A Story of Mexico,” by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida, illustrated by Ets, and published by The Viking Press.
Other nights, we read of Ceci, a middle-class little girl in Mexico City in “Nine Days to Christmas: A Story of Mexico,” written by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida. My children’s abuela grew up in Mexico City at the same time as the book’s setting.
Ceci chooses a piñata for the family posada — a traveling party event in which groups “wander” between homes or stations seeking shelter for Joseph and Mary — and imagines that her star piñata is not damaged in the celebration, but is transformed into a real star because a little girl chose it for her first posada.
The book reminds me to share stories of how the streets in Mexico used to be, both when my mother-in-law was a girl, and later, when my husband and I were children. I tell of vendors that still come door-to-door; how maids are, even now, used as nannies; and how schools and many homes have tall walls and locked gates around courtyards — all seen in “Nine Days to Christmas.”
When Monkey was the age of Ceci, we organized a posada at our own church, and let Monkey pick out the star piñata. We provided lyrics and played music; from an organizational viewpoint, the event was a disaster! Songs dragged longer than they should have, the CD player malfunctioned, we fumbled in the dark with our candles, and some of us went to the wrong stations. It seemed a crushing defeat.
We remember it fondly, though. Members from several area churches came, and they brought their children. The final station ended at the enormous Christmas tree, at the bottom of which was a manger. The lights glowed as we sang in broken Spanish about the birth of Christ.
We shared a potluck meal afterward, catching up with friends we rarely see. The kids broke the piñata in the church basement — children who had been adopted from Croatia whacked a Mexican piñata and were thrilled. We encouraged all the children — even the teens — to play, and they did. They included everyone, and traded candies until each child was happy. We shared smiles, jokes, and banter, and it was glorious.
In December, when we take the time to appreciate the beauty around us — in artwork; in memories; in traditions; and even in such deceivingly simple items as holiday books, which are steeped in lore — life becomes beautiful.
