Writung Right with Dmitri: Getting the Holiday Right
Created | Updated Dec 11, 2011
Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.
Writing Right with Dmitri: Holiday Twists and Turns
'Tis the season, everybody keeps telling me. Of course, for writers, that should mean you've done all your holiday thinking about six months ago. (Note to self: Next year, announce that the Advent Calendar will be designed...in July.) The greeting-card people are adamant about their deadlines. (They're writing Mother's Day jingles this week, I kid you not.) But still, 'tis the season, and as readers, we're looking at holiday stuff, and we might as well be writing something for the drawer, as the late, great Erich Kästner used to say. (Right before the Gestapo came in to search his office. He was under Schreibverbot, a legal restraining order. They haven't tried that on me yet.) Save it in a folder marked 'Christmas', 'Solstice', or 'Hanukkah'. You never know when you'll need it.
If we want to think about holiday writing, let's start with the greats. Like Sholem Aleichem. (You can spell his name different ways, because Mr Rabinovich used a different alphabet from the one we're employing right now.) In a collection of childhood reminiscences, this author tells us something about a Hanukkah practice in the shtetl:
The game of spinning-tops that have four corners, each marked with a letter of the alphabet, and are like dice, is very exciting. One can lose one's soul playing it. It is not so much the loss of the money as the annoyance of losing. Why should the other win? Why should the top fall on the letter G for him, and on the N for you? I suppose you know what the four letters stand for? N means no use. H means half. B means bad. And G means good. The top is a sort of lottery. Whoever is fortunate wins.Take, for example, Benny 'Polkovoi'. No matter how often he spins the top, it always falls on the letter G. – Sholem Aleichem (Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich), 'The Spinning Top', from Jewish Children
Notice: Sholem Aleichem wants to tell us about a holiday game, the game of dreydl. (The translator helps us with 'spinning top'.) He wants us to know why it was exciting, and what was at stake. But he makes sure we understand the rules first.
Once you've introduced your holiday practice, and created that all-important holiday atmosphere, you've got to sweeten the pot for the reader. You've got to put in your plot twist. Remember Benny Polkovoi? He kept winning at dreydl that year. Here's the plot twist:
Children, I grew up, and Benny grew up. He became a young man with a yellowish beard and a round belly. He wears a gold chain across it. It seems he is a rich man.
We met in the train...We kissed one another and talked of the good old times, the dear good days of our childhood, and the foolish things we did then.
'Do you remember, Benny, that 'Chanukah' when you won everything with the spinning top? The G always fell for you.'...
'Oh!' he cried, 'oh! go away with your spinning-top! That was a good top. It was a real top. It was a pudding made only of suet. It was a stew of nothing but raisins....
It was a top that had all around it, on all the corners only the one letter, G.' – Sholem Aleichem (Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich), 'The Spinning Top', from Jewish Children
Aha! Benny's using a loaded dreydl. We laugh. And we learn something about dreydl, and childhood memories, and the author's view of fortune.
No one in the English-speaking world thinks of Christmas without Charles Dickens. In the UK, he practically invented the celebration with his ghost story, A Christmas Carol Do you remember when Scrooge went time-travelling and spied on his nephew's Christmas party? There was a game going on:
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. – Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol
What a jolly scene this is. We want to join these Victorians. We can guess from the description what sort of game 'blind-man's buff' is. It's a children's game, a return to innocence. But these adults seem to have some sort of secret agenda going...'it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew'? What are these guys up to?
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains. – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Oh, now we get it. Christmas has sidled over into courting territory. You go, fella. See? First the custom, then the twist. Bang for the reading buck, here.
If Dickens is the UK Christmas writer, O Henry is the undisputed master as far as US readers are concerned. His Christmas-time lovers have already got married. Unfortunately, it's the early 1900s, and they're practically broke:
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling – something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. – O Henry (William Sydney Porter), 'The Gift of the Magi', from The Four Million
Oh, the sadness of it. (Oh, the humanity, as the radio announcer said, and wished he hadn't.) This is solid gold Christmas stuff, isn't it? But wait. What's the custom here? Why, gift-giving. If we don't understand the importance of gift-giving to this seasonal event, we don't understand what happens next.
If you don't already know what happens next – this is a classic story where I come from, so I might be making an unwarranted assumption here – I won't spoil it for you. Click on the link and read this short-short story. We'll wait.
Back now? Okay. You'll notice that Mr Porter has a point to make about gift-giving. It would be facile to say 'it's the spirit that counts'. Our author says nothing facile at all. He's earned our understanding, and now he applies the gloss:
The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. – O Henry (William Sydney Porter), 'The Gift of the Magi', from The Four Million
Holiday custom, atmosphere, twist. Simple.
You want to know how to spread international understanding at this season? Go write something like this, before you bake your next fruitcake or heat the oil for the latkes.
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