Happy winter and happy book review day!
This is the last review before Christmas, and to celebrate I thought I would review a Christmas story, one of those heart-warming things to read by the light of the tree.
My awesome mother-in-law is the best reader I know. I have shelves full of books she's lent me that I swear I will get to one day. I don't mean shelves on bookshelves... I mean an entire bookshelf. And stacks sitting in front of that entire shelf.
Anyway, she lent me this book, as she's lent me so many over the years. It was a quick read to help propel me toward finishing my yearly reading challenges, but it ended up being a quintessential Christmas read.
I love Christmas. I love it all, the music, the lights, the decorations. I love decorating. I pick a day after Remembrance Day and decorate the whole day. I love baking and parties and party planning and the cheesy TV specials and the holiday movies. I even love shopping and wrapping. Yes, busy malls leading up to Christmas... I even like that. I love all of it.
I get weepy at Christmas commercials about people coming home or being with loved ones at Christmas.
So I am totally biased with this book.
Keep that in mind.
Totally, unabashedly biased.
The book takes place on Christmas Eve. Michael returns to his parents' home. He is not happy about this, but he's there to be a good son and help his mother decorate the tree. This is something his father normally does, but instead this year he's upstairs, recovering from surgery.
As Michael and his mother unwrap each ornament, bits and pieces of the family and their relationships and history are also unwrapped. We see Michael longing for a closeness with his father that does not exist, but as the ornaments are revealed, so are secrets and truths.
This is an ultimate Christmas book. Heartwarming, hopeful, homey. It is wrapped up in love and family and gosh-darned warm-fuzzies.
Yeah, I sniffled a bit. Yeah, I shed a few tears.
And then to have the foreword by Debbie Reynolds, who I still love and who passed away almost exactly a year ago... Well, I'm not dead inside. Of course I sniffled.
I'm a fan of stories, in case you didn't know. I see much of the way I look at the world in this book.
Sometimes I would love to say that I have a neat, minimalist home, clean and organized. But it's not true. My house is usually a mess. It's cluttered. There are blankets everywhere, five pets (and therefore pet hair and toys lying around). There are usually coffee cups left out, and stacks upon stacks of books. There is usually a pile of marking somewhere. And on shelves and in corners, there are little ornaments scattered. There is art on the walls, photographs everywhere. Everything is warm and colourful and cozy.
At Christmas, the tree is the same. Once upon a time I looked longingly at magazines and pinterest to see colour-coded ornaments and trees decorated as a whole theme. Perhaps one day my style will shift to that more, but for now, my whole house is full of randomness.
I like to say that my Christmas style is "Rudolph driving the sleigh in a head-on collision against Frosty driving the Polar Express".
I can tell you where that gold sign came from (my grandmother's brother made it as a young man), or that stuffed snowman (I bought it at a market the first holiday season after I moved out, the first time I decorated on my own). That ornament on the tree? My husband made it in preschool. That painted and chipped one? A friend made it for me when I was in grade 12. That ball has a copy of our wedding invitation inside it, and those glass animals were once set up at my grandmother's house, then my mother's. I used to play with them as a child, lining them up and making them have little festive conversations together.
Each item, every single thing, has a story.
It's a mishmash. It isn't generally cohesive. It probably won't ever be photographed for a magazine. But it's all us. It's our life.
And I love it.
So I identify with this book, with the stories attached to each ornament, and how those stories say so much about Michael's family and his home.
I highly recommend this quick, sweet read, this season. It's perfect to read by a lit Christmas tree with a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies.
Yes, a whole plate. Don't worry. I won't tell.
Do you decorate in a way that beautifully cohesive, or is your style chaotic, like mine? What's your favourite, most meaningful ornament?