LocalLit book review: ‘Keeping Christmas’ shows a varied look at the popular holiday

If you’re looking for a charming, and perhaps somewhat scholarly, way to escape the summer heat for a few hours, I recommend the anthology “Keeping Christmas: The Celebration of an American Holiday.”

Published in 1990, this book is a collecction of 25 stories by various U.S. authors, including one by Matilda Rose McLaren, mother of former New Lenox resident and nationally syndicated cartoonist Fred McLaren.

The book’s Amazon description is brief: “Nineteenth and twentieth-century stories depict the meaning of Christmas for a variety of Americans.”

“Keeping Christmas” is charming in that the stories all reflect writing styles and traditions that conjure up nostalgia, sentiment for days of yore and more than a few suprises you won’t see coming.

Surprises like a 1953 story in which a Black Santa writes letters to white children on race relations.

Surprises like the tight friendship between a 7-year-old and 60-something-year-old with a predicable ending written in such flawless prose you will most likely cry anyway.

Suprises at the many stories that echo the themes in Charles Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” including one story by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

One story is a special Christmas night report (1939) from war correspondent William L. White, which was broadcase from the Finnish-Russian front. And yet, the report is not grim but full of poignant sweetness that underscores White’s point.

“Keeping Christmas” is scholarly in that the book’s introduction traces, in a dense, term paper type of layout, the history of Christmas celebrations and traditions and how these influenced the keeping of Christmas in the U.S. And this is a true introduction.

For each story contributes, in its own way, an image of how Christmas was celebrated in a certain time and in a certain place. You’ll read stories of Santa with nuances of British morality tales, and you will read social commentaries. You’ll read the range of Christmas experiences during the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Great Depression.

The writings of famous authors and lesser-known writers whose words have long faded into obscurity are found side-by-side in this anthology since they all meet the common theme of keeping Christmas in the U.S.

I suggest reading this book one story at a time and then picking the book up the next day to read another. Perhaps by the time December rolls around, you’ll have a wider experience, not just of Christmas and not just of history, but of people, all people, and all people’s relationships to each other.

At any rate, that’s how “Keeping Christmas: The Celebration of an American Holiday” affected me.

The book is available on Amazon and other sites that carry used books.

Know more about LocalLit

Each week LocalLit will deliver an original short and family-friendly story (or a book review) by a local author to the newsletter’s subscribers.

Local writers: Do you have a book you’d like me to review? A short story you’d like to share with LocalLit subscribers?

Please contact me at 815-280-4122 or dunland@shawmedia.com.

Authors with a connection to our readership area may submit. Submission does not guarantee acceptance.

Subscribe to the free newsletter at shawlocal.com/the-herald-news/newsletter/#//.