Christmas Reading
This post was written before Christmas, but I am only now getting around to posting it.
It’s been quite a month. From tornadoes to family sickness to navigating Christmas traditions and events, many things have added measures of stress and sadness to the holiday season. As Christmas approached, I tried to figure out how to conjure spirit and joy, both of which were running low.
So I turned to books.
The books I’m reading are not capturing my imagination, so I admitted defeat on a current read and pulled an old favorite off the shelf: Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone.
Years ago, I re-read the Harry Potter series every Christmas, or at least as much of the series as was available, and it was a favorite Christmas tradition. But now there are too many books to reread every December, and always too many new books on the shelves for me to want to spend tons of time rereading old ones, and I have let the tradition slide.
This year, though, I am in need of some comfort, some bit of the loveliness of the past, and today, that is found in the magic and music of Harry Potter. I whipped through the first 70 pages in an hour. The book is so delightful, even though I can quote portions of it, and I never tire of the wonder of hearing Hagrid tell Harry he’s a wizard.
What makes old books like this so very comforting? Is it all the versions of myself I can see holding this story, starting with the first year teacher who checked out a copy from the school library only so she could tell her seventh graders she had taken their recommendation and read a Harry Potter book? Is it the memories attached, starting with the copy I have beside me now with the $2.99 sticker on the cover, which I picked up in some discount store in Louisville when we were first married, both so I could reread it and so I could share the magic with my husband? Is it sheer joy in the words, the delight in the phrasing, the sentences I’ve read so many times they ought to be worn thin but aren’t?
I don’t know. It may be all of this and extra. I only know that on this Monday in December, five days before Christmas, I am so thankful to have this old friend beside me.