The joys of reading aloud

Evan Solomon, Nathaniel McDaniel and the Magic Attic, Volume 2: The Sabre-Toothed Tiger (Puffin Canada, 2007)
As much as good food and drink, words and music have always been part of my holiday. On the family side, we celebrate Hanukkah. The highlight? Before the presents are opened, we belt out “Rock of Ages,” a song about the miraculous drop of oil that burned for eight days.

But there is also one poem, “For Friends Only” by W.H. Auden, that one of my closest friends sends to me every year, as a kind of ageless gift.

This excerpt, where Auden assures the reader that true friendship is never diminished by time or distance, has become, for me, the prayer of the holiday.
    May you fall at once
    Into a cordial dream, assured
    That whoever slept in this bed before
    Was also someone we like,
    That within the circle of our affection
    Also you have no double.

Andrew Pyper, The Killing Circle (Doubleday Canada, 2008)
I’m a novelist, a professional maker-upper – I thought I knew how to tell a story. And then our daughter Maude arrived. She likes books (and is destined to receive a small library this Christmas), but what she loves is for her dad to invent another chapter involving Pickles and Freckles, best friends who can leap off her bedroom table lampshade and pursue incredible adventures. The books I write (mostly) pay the bills. But Pickles and Freckles are my real living now.

Roy MacGregor, Forever: The Annual Hockey Classic (Red Deer, 2005)
We tend to sit with our own books and, in rare moments, will say, “Did you know...” or “Listen to this....” Yet for the most part, we read quietly in that marvellous “cone of silence” that those who come from large families (there are six of us) tend to adapt just to survive. For a busy family such as ours, especially during the even more busy holiday period, books are a double escape – first from the white and multicoloured noise that is the reality of any demanding household, and second into the indescribable pleasure of finding a special story that seems to speak, silently yet loudly, to you alone.

Barbara Reid, Fox Walked Alone (Scholastic Canada, 2006)
My husband, Ian Crysler, started our Christmas Eve read-aloud tradition when our daughters were small. We each take turns reading verses from The Night Before Christmas. Now that they are teenagers there is a bit of eye rolling about it, but aren’t embarrassing family traditions the best ones of all?
   
Jean Little, The Sweetest One of All (Scholastic Canada, 2008)
Although I am not a fan of winter, I look forward to the poems and longer stories we read at Christmas. But, in our household, the greatest reading takes place at our “Dickens Party,” which I have held, wherever I happen to be, for more than 40 years. About 15 people come together at 7 p.m. to help read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol aloud from start to finish. We read, taking turns around the circle, until we come to the break before the Ghost of Christmas Past. Then we stop to eat and drink and cheer one another on. It is wonderful fun and often brings Christmas to life more than the day itself.

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