Authors Who Steal Away Our Hearts At Christmas!
© Kathleen D. Anderson
On the last day of my Great Books class for the year, as we sat under the twinkle of a ten foot tall Christmas tree in the old mansion where my classes were held, I became distracted from our discussion as a vision beckoned to me like the shining star on top of the evergreen next to us.
I began to think about a future class where students would read classic holiday books, sipping hot cider in front of a fireplace while discussing some of the authorial greats who wrote Christmas stories.
Not having time to indulge in my daydreaming, I turned my attention back to my class, and the possibility of the names of those "Christmas" authors left my mind.
Later in the day, while at the theater watching J.R.R.Tolkein’s movie, "The Lord of the Rings," I went back to my earlier thoughts. Oddly enough, I suddenly remembered someone telling me once that Tolkein wrote a book entitled "Letters From Father Christmas"---how each December, a letter would arrive from the North Pole for his children: one full of stories of life at the North Pole, illustrated by a beautiful drawing~~~~Tolkien sent these letters to his children over a twenty-year span and now they are collected into a one book collection.
My attention went back to the movie, but unlike the characters in the "Lord of the Rings" who are on a journey to end evil, thinking about Tolkein’s holiday book lead me through my own quest---to discover holiday cheer through some very well known and also relatively unknown literary holiday classics written by authorial legends.
I decided right then and there that maybe one day I would have a Great Books class during the holidays---a class which would engage in discussion near this tree, or a similar glimmering tree with thousands of tiny lights shining on our books' pages.
At the very least, I would begin to collect these books for future Christmas gifts for the book readers in my life!
So began my quest for the authors of Christmas!
In my internal enthusiasm, I jumped from Tolkein to another classic author, a writer of holiday stories~~~~Louisa May Alcott---one of the greatest female writers of the 19th century, famous for "Little Women," but not greatly known for her work called "The Quiet Little Woman," a charming Christmas story for three girls who emulated the "Little Women’s" March sisters by founding a literary magazine.
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