Christmastime emblems like holly and evergreens have a complicated history they were used as decorations not due to their aesthetic qualities but because they were heartening symbols of life everlasting when the winds and the cold killed off so many in ancient winters. Indeed, she notes in her opening piece that the original Celtic start of the holiday season began with Samhain -today’s Halloween. This eerieness is something Winterson often returns to in her stories. The archetypal Christmas story actually has more in common with Halloween than it does with Santa sipping Coca-Cola. Yet arguably the most compelling aspect of the story isn’t Scrooge, but the ghosts who appear with ill-tidings. The text has been worked over in so many ways that its message of redemption and kindness is baked into the holiday like so many nuts and raisins into barely edible fruitcake. Scott turned into animation, like A Christmas Carol (2009), helmed by Jim Carrey packed with Muppets, à la The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) or spun off into a wholly different creation, as in the black comedy Scrooged (1988), starring Bill Murray. It’s been made and remade many times over: adapted straight off, such as in the 1984 superb CBS movie featuring George C. One of the principal texts of Christmas, undoubtedly, is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Without being overly sentimental, Winterson’s stories ride a line that embodies the optimism of the season contrasted with the deeper, pagan roots of the winter solstice. Regardless, Christmas Days-a collection of 12 shorts with accompanying recipes-embodies compelling aspects of the holiday. I’m closer to the unreformed Charlie Brown who didn’t fall for Linus’s speech. I don’t take to Winterson’s optimism as tightly as I would like.
In pagan and Roman times it was a celebration of the power of light and the co-operation of nature in human life.Īgain, I’m a sucker for the season, but I hold to my own conflicted outlook. It is a joining together, a putting aside of differences. Christmas is celebrated across the world by people of all religions and none. I know Christmas has become a cynical retail hijack bit it is up to us all, individually and collectively, to object to that.
As she writes in the first entry of Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, she still holds onto the nobler aspects of the occasion despite the sinister motivations of corporate overlords: Jeanette Winterson is equally susceptible to the tug of yuletide. Despite all of this, there still are the usual Christmas trappings of family, food, and that nonsense about peace on Earth and good will towards all.
Or, perhaps, the elongated break I get between fall and spring semesters as an educator. It largely has to do with the winter weather. Like many people, I am a huge sucker for this time of year.
0 kommentar(er)
