Christmas Around the Fire

S. Topping Ryan N.

Description

Christmas is a time for celebrating the birth of Jesus with family and friends, to gather together in sacred and jovial celebration of the Incarnation. Yet in our fast-paced, hyper-digitized lives, we are losing the sense of a good story, among good friends, around a good fire. In Christmas Around the Fire, Ryan Topping invites us to turn off the television set, put down the device, quiet ourselves, and gather our loved ones to enjoy some of the best writing, in a variety of forms, about Christmas. Whether or not your family has an actual fireplace around which to gather is not so important, but it helps! Included within are entries from legendary novelists and poets such as Leo Tolstoy, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Willa Cather, and more, as well as the profound thoughts of great religious figures such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Saint John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. For those who love the true spirit of the "most wonderful time of the year", and who love reading in almost equal measure, Christmas Around the Fire will quickly become a family tradition. This is one of those rarest of books, one around which family memories are made.

Informations

• Publié par: TAN Books
• Date de parution: 09 septembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505111163
• Langue: English

Extrait

Christmas Around the Fire
Christmas Around the Fire

Stories, Essays, & Poems for the Season of Christ’s Birth
Edited by Ryan N. S. Topping
TAN Books Charlotte, North Carolina
Copyright © 2019 Ryan N. S. Topping
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.
Passages from papal documents, encyclicals, and addresses Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Permission to reprint The Christmas Gift granted by Madonna House Publications, Combermere, Ontario. Original publication Donkey Bells: Advent and Christmas with Catherine Doherty (1994/2000) pp 111-118, madonnahouse.org/publications .
Keeping Christmas Local first appeared in the Imaginative Conservative and is republished with permission of the author.
Cover design by Caroline K. Green
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019937341
ISBN: 978-1-5051-1115-6
Published in the United States by
TAN Books
PO Box 410487
Charlotte, NC 28241
www.TANBooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
The Toppings dedicate this book to the Sieberts, with thanks for many happy Christmases…
“You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires.”
—Charles Dickens
“God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world.”
—Pope Benedict XVI
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Stories
Leo Tolstoy, Papa Panov’s Special Christmas
G. K. Chesterton, The Modern Scrooge
Charles Dickens, The Spirit of Christmas Past
Henry Van Dyke, The First Christmas Tree
Stephen Leacock, Merry Christmas
The Hegge Cycle, The Annunciation
Willa Cather, The Burglar’s Christmas
Harrison S. Morris, A Christmas Miracle
Oscar Wilde, The Selfish Giant
Ruth Sawyer, This Was the Christmas
Catherine Doherty, The Christmas Gift
Henry Van Dycke, The Other Wise Man
Ryan N. S. Topping, A Canadian Christmas
Part II: Essays & Poems
Pope Benedict XVI, Advent Calls Us to Silence
George MacDonald, That Holy Thing
Pope St. John Paul II, Rejoice, The Lord Is Near
G. M. Hopkins, Moonless Darkness Stands Between
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Great Is the Lord’s Love for Us
Ben Jonson, A Hymn on the Nativity of My Saviour
Joseph Pearce, Keeping Christmas Local
Robert Southwell, The Burning Babe
G. K. Chesterton, The Rituals of Christmas
Clement Clarke Moore, A Visit From St. Nicholas
Hillaire Belloc, A Remaining Christmas
G. K. Chesterton, The House of Christmas
St. Augustine, A Christmas Sermon
Christina Rossetti, The Shepherds Had an Angel
Charles Lamb, A Few Words on Christmas
Thomas Hardy, The Oxen
Charles Dickens, What Christmas Is as We Grow Older
John Neale, Good King Wenceslas
Charles Dudley Warner, The Burden of Christmas
Sara Teasdale, A Christmas Carol
Cardinal Newman, Why Do We Need Epiphany?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Three Kings
Pope Benedict XVI, Epiphany in a Secular Age
Introduction
HIS BOOK was born out of our family’s experience of reading together over the holidays. My wife and I often read aloud to each other and to our children. But during the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, when the nights are dark and cold, we devote long evenings to it.
For several years now, our family has shared most of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day with some close friends and their children. After dinner, clean up, baths, prayers, perhaps a play practice and singing, the younger ones are rounded up and tucked into bed and the older ones into some corner or other of the house where we can’t hear them. My wife and I have nine children. In our household, bedtime marks the beginning of our “quiet time.” It is now that another round of eggnog and brandy is poured, evening crafts and games reappear, a drawing is returned to, and soon will begin one of our favorite Christmas activities—reading aloud.
In the weeks leading up to December 25, the question yearly arises: what to read this year? During these long evenings, we have no time for television, but instead look forward to hearing the voice of a friend or family member read a good story. One Christmas, I decided to put together a list of stories that would suit the leisure and deep joy of this season. The collection you have in your hand grew from that original compilation.
In looking through this volume, you’ll find stories, essays, and poems. Some tales are short, others long, some from America, Canada, or England, others from faraway countries and times; some reflections, like the ones by St Augustine and Benedict XVI, provoke deep thought, while others, like those by Tolstoy and G. K. Chesterton, are more whimsical. What unites these selections is that each, in its own way, points us back to the miracle of the Babe in Bethlehem. Just as his birth needed Mary, Joseph, Angels, and also an ox, an ass, and lowly shepherds, so also does the Holy Child’s message need our voices—the voices of poets, priests, parents, philosophers, and storytellers to carry his love into our hearts.
May this collection, from our family to yours, help carry that Love into your hearts this Christmas and throughout the year.
PART I
Stories
Papa Panov’s Special Christmas
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
“So he did come after all!”
The famed Russian storyteller and novelist Tolstoy describes, in beautifully simple terms, how a poor shoemaker comes, unexpectedly, to meet Christ one Christmas. Tolstoy’s tale is inspired by Jesus’s saying found in Matthew 25:35: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

T WAS Christmas Eve and although it was still afternoon, lights had begun to appear in the shops and houses of the little Russian village, for the short winter day was nearly over. Excited children scurried indoors and now only muffled sounds of chatter and laughter escaped from closed shutters.
Old Papa Panov, the village shoemaker, stepped outside his shop to take one last look around. The sounds of happiness, the bright lights and the faint but delicious smells of Christmas cooking reminded him of past Christmas times when his wife had still been alive and his own children little. Now they had gone. His usually cheerful face, with the little laughter wrinkles behind the round steel spectacles, looked sad now. But he went back indoors with a firm step, put up the shutters and set a pot of coffee to heat on the charcoal stove. Then, with a sigh, he settled in his big armchair.
Papa Panov did not often read, but tonight he pulled down the big old family Bible and, slowly tracing the lines with one forefinger, he read again the Christmas story. He read how Mary and Joseph, tired by their journey to Bethlehem, found no room for them at the inn, so that Mary’s little baby was born in the cowshed.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” exclaimed Papa Panov. “If only they had come here! I would have given them my bed and I could have covered the baby with my patchwork quilt to keep him warm.”
He read on about the wise men who had come to see the baby Jesus, bringing him splendid gifts. Papa Panov’s face fell. “I have no gift that I could give him,” he thought sadly.
Then his face brightened. He put down the Bible, got up and stretched his long arms to the shelf high up in his little room. He took down a small, dusty box and opened it. Inside was a perfect pair of tiny leather shoes. Papa Panov smiled with satisfaction. Yes, they were as good as he had remembered—the best shoes he had ever made. “I should give him those,” he decided, as he gently put them away and sat down again.
He was feeling tired now, and the further he read the sleepier he became. The print began to dance before his eyes so that he closed them, just for a minute. In no time at all Papa Panov was fast asleep.
And as he slept he dreamed. He dreamed that someone was in his room and he knew at once, as one does in dreams, who the person was. It was Jesus.
“You have been wishing that you could see me, Papa Panov,” he said kindly. “Then look for me tomorrow. It will be Christmas Day and I will visit you. But look carefully, for I shall not tell you who I am.”
When at last Papa Panov awoke, the bells were ringing out and a thin light was filtering through the shutters. “Bless my soul!” said Papa Panov. “It’s Christmas Day!”
He stood up and stretched himself for he was rather stiff. Then his face filled with happiness as he remembered his dream. This would be a very special Christmas after all, for Jesus was coming to visit him. How would he look? Would he be a little baby, as at that first Christmas? Would he be a grown man, a carpenter—or the great King that he is, God’s Son? He must watch carefully the whole day through so that he recognized him however he came.
Papa Panov put on a special pot of coffee for his Christmas breakfast, took down the shutters and looked out of the window. The street was deserted, no one was stirring yet. No one except the road sweeper. He looked as miserable and dirty as ever, and well he might! Whoever wanted to work on Christmas Day—and in the raw cold and bitter freezing mist of such a morning?
Papa Panov opened the shop door, letting in a thin stream of cold air. “Come in!” he shouted across the street cheerily. “Come in and have some hot coffee to keep out the cold!”
The sweeper looked up, scarcely able to believe h