The joys of reading aloud

This story was originally titled "The Joys of Reading Aloud" in the January 2009 issue. Subscribe to Canadian Living today and never miss an issue!

Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air (McClelland and Stewart, 2007)
The holidays don’t begin until I look into the grumpy, good-natured eyes of Father Christmas by Raymond Briggs. He’s a splendid character, an expert on creature comforts and cosy solitude, never without a Thermos and lunch bag as he voyages from Dec. 24 to 25 in beautiful panels depicting snow, sleet, rain, fog, rooftops, chimneys, house interiors, dawn, sunrise, daytime and home. My children and I pore over this book every Christmas, luxuriating in the spectacle of prolonged effort amply rewarded by the bliss of plum pudding, cognac, cocoa, a hot water bottle and bed.
    
    
Miriam Toews, The Flying Troutmans (Knopf Canada, 2008)
Last year our family went to Costa Rica for Christmas, and we passed around a book called The Fan Man, by William Kotzwinkle. It’s a pretty funny book, written in the ’70s, about a guy called Horse Badorties who collects fans but whose real dream is to put together a choir. We all laid around on the beach reading passages of it aloud to one another, including a few pages made up entirely of the word dorky. It was goofy and fun. We were all quoting a lot of Horse Badorties that Christmas.


David Bergen, The Retreat (McClelland and Stewart, 2008)
The Conversion of the Jews by Philip Roth is a wonderful story to read aloud. It might seem an odd choice for Christmas, but the nonviolent message is perfectly done. It is tremendously affecting in its depiction of young Ozzie Freedman, who challenges the hypocrisy of his religion and ultimately of all religion, and is physically punished by his mother for doing so. Ozzie desires certainty, and at one point, high on a rooftop looking down at the street below, he wishes for a coin in the sky (provided by God, of course) that would say either “Jump” or “Don’t jump.” The ending to this story is pitch-perfect; it’s a great Christmas read.

Ami McKay, The Birth House (Vintage Canada, 2007)
Our large, dusty box of Christmas decorations held three old books – my great-grandmother’s cookbook, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, and Robert Service’s The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses. Winter wouldn’t be complete without hot chocolate, Gran Tilly’s lebkuchen, and recitations of “Jabberwocky” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

Gail Bowen, The Brutal Heart (McClelland and Stewart, 2008)
Christmas was my mother-in-law’s favourite holiday, so when our first child was born, she gave me a journal for recording our new daughter’s first 25 Christmases, the inscription straightforward and wise: “Fill this book!” – and I did.

For 36 years, I have recorded our family’s Christmases. Our best have celebrated beginnings; our saddest were shadowed by loss. But all the memories are recorded, and at some point during the holidays, all of us read the Christmas journals.

Last year my husband and I made copies of our Christmas books for our three grown children, and we gave them each their own Christmas journal, inscribed with Babba’s joyful command: “Fill this book!”

Page 1 of 2 - Read page 2 for 5 more classic Holiday books!