“THE GIFT OF THE MAGI” by O. Henry: O. Henry is another underappreciated author, as witness the fact that dozens of stories, screenplays, and sitcoms have copied the plot of this story. But none of them have ever managed to copy the charm or the style of this simple little tale of a watch fob and a set of tortoiseshell combs.
“RUMPOLE AND THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST-MAS” by John Mortimer: If you’ve encountered the irascible Old Bailey hack, Horace Rumpole, on PBS’s Mystery, he seems like the last person to have any Christmas spirit. And he is. Which is why this story works so well. Leave it to John Mortimer to teach us a new meaning of “the Christmas spirit.”
“THE SANTA CLAUS COMPROMISE” by Thomas Disch: This story of a future in which six-and seven-year-olds have finally gotten their political rights and have exercised them by exposing the Santa scandal could have been written in today’s group-rights-activism climate. The fact that it was written back in 1975, when satire was still possible, makes it chilling as well as funny.
“ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAROL” by P. G. Wodehouse: There’s no way to describe a P. G. Wodehouse story, so I won’t even try. I’ll just say that this is the only Christmas story I know of that involves the bubonic plague and tofu, and that, if you’ve never read him, there could be no better Christmas gift than discovering P. G. Wodehouse.
“FOR THE TIME BEING: A CHRISTMAS ORATORIO” by W. H. Auden: Part play, part poem, part masterpiece, this long work is what you should read in January, when you’re taking down the Christmas decorations and your sense of goodwill toward men and putting them away for another year, and then facing the bleak post-Bethlehem world we all find ourselves living in.
And Twelve to Watch
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: The best Christmas movie ever made. (See Introduction.) I am of course talking about the original, with Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn. In black-and-white. Don’t even think about either of the wretched remakes.
A CHRISTMAS STORY: A close second, this Jean Shepherd story of a kid who desperately wants a BB gun (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”) for Christmas is that rarest of things—nostalgic without a trace of sentimentality. It has a number of hilarious scenes—the tongue stuck to the flagpole, the Bumpus dogs and the turkey, the trip to see the department-store Santa. (Pick your favorite. Mine is the Major Award, no, wait, the Ovaltine magic decoder ring, no, wait …) But it’s not just a series of comic set pieces. More than any other Christmas story, A Christmas Story captures just how badly you want things when you’re a kid and how central Christmas is to the kid’s year.
THE SURE THING: I almost didn’t go see this movie. The previews (and the title) made it look like a beery remake of Porky’s. But then I noticed that certain scenes looked an awful lot like It Happened One Night and decided to take a chance. Now, every year we watch this great road picture about Allison, who’s going to visit her boyfriend for Christmas, and Gibb, who’s trying to get to California for “a sure thing” and who happens to hitch a ride in the same car with Allison.
MEET JOHN DOE: Frank Capra’s other Christmas movie—you know the one I mean—is a lot more famous than this one (and shown approximately 987 times a day through the entire month of December), but this one, which stars Gary Cooper as a down-and-out hobo and Barbara Stanwyck as an enterprising reporter, is really interesting, especially in these days of religious cults, hungry-for-power politicians, a rampant press, and even more rampant cynicism.
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK: Most movies made during World War II were about brave soldiers and the girls who waited faithfully for them on the home front. Preston Sturges instead decided to tell the story of a girl who goes to an army dance and ends up getting married (maybe) and pregnant (definitely), and of her 4-F boyfriend, Norville, who tries to help her out of her predicament. But everything they attempt only makes things worse, till nothing short of a miracle can save them, and you can’t even imagine a miracle that would do any good.
AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS: This one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti about the wise men stopping at a poor widow’s on their way to Bethlehem was originally produced for television. It’s out on video, but, even better, it’s often performed at Christmas by churches, colleges, and community theater groups, and I definitely recommend seeing it live. The story is haunting, the music is heartbreaking, and every production adds something to the simple story of the crippled shepherd boy, his embittered mother, and their distinguished visitors.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (THE MOVIES): There are a jillion versions of this, starring everybody from Alastair Sim to Captain Picard to Bill Murray. My two favorites are The Muppets’ and Mr. Magoo’s. Not only are they the most literarily faithful (okay, okay, the Muppet one has two Marleys, but it also has Charles Dickens as a character—and Rizzo the Rat), but they’re the most fun. And they have wonderful scores. The Muppets’ songs were written by Paul Williams. Mr. Magoo’s were done by the Broadway team of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, and include the wonderful “When You’re Alone in the World.”
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: This sweet and romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman is about the loony complications that can result from being all alone at Christmastime and wishing you were part of a family.
THE THREE GODFATHERS: A Christmas story in the last place you’d ever expect to find one—a John Ford Western starring John Wayne—The Three Godfathers tells the story of three bank robbers who find a pioneer woman in a godforsaken place and about to give birth. This is the perfect movie to watch when you’ve overdosed on mistletoe and Santas and snow, and it may introduce you to John Ford’s Westerns, which are all wonderful, and convince you to go on to The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
THE LEMON DROP KID: Not only is this based on a Damon Runyon story (see comments on Runyon under “Dancing Dan’s Christmas”), but it has Bob Hope. And the song “Silver Bells.”
WHITE CHRISTMAS: This wasn’t the movie that introduced the song, but who cares? It’s got Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Vera-Ellen, Rosemary Clooney, fifteen Irving Berlin songs, soldiers, snow, sentiment, and killer costumes.
LITTLE WOMEN: This isn’t really a Christmas movie, but it starts out at Christmas, and the book has one of the great Christmas-story first lines ever:” ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” And I watched it every Christmas when I was a kid. There are three versions to choose from: the one I grew up on was the June Allyson one (with Elizabeth Taylor perfectly cast as snotty Amy), the Katharine Hepburn version is generally acknowledged to be a classic, and my personal favorite is the new one with Winona Ryder and Kirsten Dunst.
Be sure not to miss
Passage
the brilliant novel from
CONNIE WILLIS
A tale of love, disaster, near-death experiences—
and maybe a bit of the Titanic.
Available from Bantam Books
Here’s a special excerpt:
CHAPTER ONE
“More light!”
—Goethe’s last words
“I heard a noise,” Mrs. Davenport said, “and then I was moving through this tunnel.”
“Can you describe it?” Joanna asked, pushing the mini-tape recorder a little closer to her on the bedtable.
“The tunnel?” Mrs. Davenport said. “Well, it was dark …”
Joanna waited. Any question, even “How dark was it?” could be a leading one, and most people when confronted with silence, would talk to fill it, and all the interviewer had to do was wait.
Not, however, Mrs. Davenport. She stared at her IV stand for a while, and then looked inquiringly at Joanna.
“Is there anything else you can remember about the tunnel?” Joanna asked.
“No …” she said after a minute. “It was dark.”
“Dark,” Joanna wrote down. She always took notes in case the tape ran out or something went wrong with the recorder, and so she could note the subject’s manner and intonation. “Closemouthed,” she wrote. “Relu
ctant.” But sometimes the reluctant ones turned out to be the best subjects if you just had patience.
“You said you heard a noise,” Joanna said. “Can you describe it?”
“A noise?” Mrs. Davenport said vaguely.
If you just had the patience of Job, Joanna corrected. “You said,” she said, consulting her notes,” ‘I heard a noise, and then I was moving through this tunnel.’ Did you hear the noise before you entered the tunnel?”
“No …” Mrs. Davenport said, frowning, “… yes. I’m not sure.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It was a sort of ringing …” She looked questioningly at Joanna. “Or maybe a buzzing?”
Joanna kept her face carefully impassive. An encouraging smile, a frown could be leading, too.
“A buzzing, I think,” Mrs. Davenport said after a minute.
“Can you describe it?” I should have had something to eat before I started this, Joanna thought. It was after twelve, and she hadn’t had anything for breakfast except coffee and a Pop-tart. But she had wanted to get to Mrs. Davenport before Maurice Mandrake got to her. And the longer the interval between the NDE and the interview, the more confabulation there was.
“Describe it?” Mrs. Davenport said irritably. “A buzzing.”
It was no use. She was going to have to ask more specific questions, leading or not, or she would never get anything out of her. “What sort of buzzing was it? Was it steady or intermittent?”
“Intermittent?” Mrs. Davenport said, confused.
“Did it stop and start? Like someone buzzing to get into an apartment? Or was it a steady sound like the buzzing of a bee?”
Mrs. Davenport stared at her IV stand some more. “A bee,” she said finally.
“Was the buzzing loud or soft?”
“Loud,” she said, but uncertainly.
I’m not going to be able to use any of this, Joanna thought.
“Loud at first, but then it stopped. That’s when I noticed it.
When it stopped.”
“What happened after it stopped?”
“I was in the tunnel,” Mrs. Davenport said. “It was dark, and then I—”
Joanna’s pager began to beep. Wonderful, she thought, fumbling to switch it off. This is all I need.
“Do you have to go?” Mrs. Davenport asked.
“No. You were in the tunnel—”
“If you have to go …”
“I don’t,” Joanna said firmly, sticking it back in her pocket without looking at it. “It’s nothing. You were in the tunnel—”
“I was in the tunnel,” Mrs. Davenport said, looking disappointed. “It was dark, and then I saw there was a light at the end of it.”
“Can you describe the light?”
“It was golden,” she said promptly. Too promptly. And she looked smugly pleased, like a child who knows the answer.
“Golden,” Joanna said.
“Yes, and brighter than any light I’d ever seen, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. It was warm and comforting, and as I looked into it I could see it was a being, an Angel of Light.”
“An Angel of Light,” Joanna said with a sinking feeling.
“Yes, and all around the angel were people I’d known who had died. My mother and my poor dear father and my brother Alvin who was killed at Guadalcanal, and the Angel of Light said—”
“Before you went into the tunnel,” Joanna said abruptly, “did you have an out-of-body experience?”
“No,” she said, just as promptly. “Mr. Mandrake said people sometimes do, but all I had was the tunnel and the light.”
Mr. Mandrake. Of course. She should have known.
“He interviewed me last night,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Do you know him?”
Oh, yes, Joanna thought.
“He’s a famous author, you know,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Brushed by the Light and The Light at the End of the Tunnel. He’s working on a new one. You’d never know he was famous, though. He’s so nice. He has a wonderful way of asking questions.”
He certainly does, Joanna thought. She’d heard him: “When you went through the tunnel, did you hear a buzzing sound? Would you describe the light you saw at the end of the tunnel as golden? Even though it was brighter than anything you’d ever seen, it didn’t hurt your eyes, did it? When did you meet the Angel of Light?” Leading wasn’t even the word.
And smiling, nodding encouragingly at the answers he wanted. Pursing his lips, asking “Are you sure it wasn’t more of a ringing than a buzzing?” Frowning, asking concernedly, “And you don’t remember hovering above the operating table? You’re sure?”
They remembered it all for him, leaving their body and entering the tunnel and meeting Jesus, the Light and the Life Review and the Meetings with Deceased Loved Ones. Conveniently forgetting the sights and sounds that didn’t fit and conjuring up the ones that did. And completely obliterating whatever had actually occurred.
It was bad enough having Moody’s books out there and Embraced by the Light and all the other accounts of near-death experiences and TV specials and magazine articles telling people what they should expect to see without having someone right here in Mercy General putting ideas in her subjects’ heads.
“Mr. Mandrake told me except for the out-of-body thing,” Mrs. Davenport said proudly, “my near-death experience was one of the best he’d ever taken.”
Taken is right, Joanna thought. And now, whatever Mrs. Davenport actually experienced, she was convinced it was a buzzing and a tunnel and an Angel of Light.
There was no point in going on with this. “Thank you, Mrs. Davenport,” Joanna said. “I think I have enough.”
“But I haven’t told you about the life review yet,” Mrs. Davenport, no longer reluctant, said. “The Angel of Light made me look in this crystal, and it showed me all the things I’d ever done, both good and bad, my whole life.”
Which she will now proceed to tell me, Joanna thought. She sneaked her hand into her pocket and switched her pager back on. Beep, she willed it. Now.
“Mr. Mandrake said the out-of-body experience wasn’t really part of the core NDE experience, that it was the tunnel and the light and the life review that really mattered.”
Now that she wanted the beeper to go off, it remained stubbornly silent. She needed one with a button you could press to make it beep in emergencies. She wondered if Radio Shack had one.
“And then the light started to sparkle on and off,” Mrs. Davenport said, “and the Angel handed me a telegram, just like the one we got when Alvin was killed, and I said, ‘Does this mean you’re telling me I’m dead?’ and the Angel said, ‘No, it’s a message telling you you must return to your earthly life.’ Are you getting all this down?”
“Yes,” Joanna said, writing, “Cheeseburger, fries, large Coke.”
“And I said, ‘But I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here in heaven with you.’ And the Angel said, ‘It is not your time yet,’ and the next thing I knew I was back in the operating room. I’ll never forget it. The light was so beautiful.”
“If I don’t get out of here soon,” Joanna wrote, “the cafeteria will be closed, so please, somebody, page me.”
Her beeper finally, blessedly went off during Mrs. Davenport’s description of the light as “like shining prisms of diamonds and sapphires and rubies,” a verbatim quote from Brushed by the Light.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,” Joanna said, pulling the pager out of her pocket. “It’s an emergency.” She snatched up her tape recorder and switched it off.
“Where can I get in touch with you if I remember anything else about by NDE?”
“You can call me on my pager,” Joanna said, and fled.
She didn’t even check to see who was paging her till she was safely out of the room. It was a number she didn’t recognize, from inside the hospital. She went down to the nurses’ station to call it.
“Do you know whose this number is?” she asked Eileen, the charge nurse.
“No,” Joanna said grimly. “I have Mr. Mandrake’s number. He managed to get to Mrs. Davenport before I did. That’s the third interview this week he’s ruined.”
“You’re kidding,” Eileen said sympathetically. She was still looking at the number on the pager. “It might be Dr. Wright’s. He was here looking for you earlier.”
“Dr. Wright?” Joanna said, frowning. “Can you describe him?”
“Tall, young, blonde—”
“Cute,” Tish, who’d just come up to the desk with a chart, said.
The description didn’t fit anybody Joanna knew. “Did he say what he wanted?”
Eileen shook her head. “He asked me if you were the person doing NDE research.”
“Wonderful,” Joanna said. “He probably wants to tell me how he went through a tunnel and saw a light, all his dead relatives, and Maurice Mandrake.”
“Do you think so?” Eileen said doubtfully. “I mean, he’s a doctor.”
“If only that were a guarantee against being a nut,” Joanna said. “You know Dr. Abrams from over at Mt. Sinai? Last week he suckered me into lunch by promising to talk to the head of internal medicine about letting me do interviews over there, and then proceeded to tell me about his NDE, in which he saw a tunnel, a light, and Moses, who told him to come back and read the Torah out loud to people. Which he did. All the way through lunch.”
“You’re kidding,” Eileen said.
“But this Dr. Wright was cute,” Tish put in.
“Unfortunately, that’s not a guarantee either,” Joanna said, and then casually, “You don’t know if anybody from the ER tried to page me, do you?”
Eileen looked stern. “You turned your pager off again, didn’t you, Dr. Lander? You know that’s against hospital rules.”
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories Page 32