An Undergraduate Christmas

This year, I asked my students to select a favourite piece of Christmas writing, which they would read to the class. I was quite frankly astonished by the quality of the selections, which, taken together, constitute a veritable cornucopia of festive blessings.

For the current academic year I am honoured to have been awarded the St. John Henry Newman Chair of Catholic Studies at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. As a great admirer of this particular college, it’s good to be able to renew my association with it, having previously been a Visiting Fellow from 2012 to 2014.

During my monthly visits to the college during the Fall semester, I have been co-teaching the Writing Tutorial. It is, however, a Writing Tutorial with a difference. Indeed, it says something of the quality of the students who attend TMC and the quality of the education being offered that this tutorial is not the sort of remedial writing course taught at most undergraduate institutions in these days of endemic illiteracy among the young. Students at TMC do not need to be taught the basics of how to write a sentence. Instead, they are being taught to write in the literary and not merely the literal sense of the word.

Following the time-honoured method of learning through imitation, the students read selections from the great works of the past, including selections from Cicero, Samuel Johnson, Dickens, Belloc, Chesterton, Churchill, Orwell and Walker Percy. In doing so, they learn to craft their own writing in emulation of the masters of the past. In the words of the course description, “the student considers correct diction and style, and ponders the abuse of words and the Platonic criticisms against mere ‘rhetoric’.”

Apart from reading, studying and emulating the great prose stylists, the students had also read and discussed various styles of verse, including Anglo-Saxon riddles, traditional ballads, and a variety of sonnets from across the centuries, from Wyatt to Wilbur. Having grasped the principles of verse composition, they had then produced original poems of their own.

For my final visit of the semester, the students were asked to select a favourite piece of Christmas writing, which they would read to the class, giving a brief explanation of their reasons for their selection of the particular work they had chosen. I was quite frankly astonished by the quality of the selections, which was indicative of the depth and breadth of the students’ reading.

I will let the selection speak for itself.

One student read an excerpt from Little Women in which the four March sisters learn the spirit and the practice of Christian charity on Christmas Day in offering their own breakfast to a poor immigrant family. Another student selected O. Henry’s short story, “The Gift of the Magi”, in which a young married couple learn the true meaning of self-sacrificial marital love in their purchasing of Christmas gifts for each other.

On a more sombre note, one student read Hans Anderson’s heart-wrenching story of “The Little Match Girl” and, on a similar theme, another read “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”, Dostoyevsky’s wonderful short-story. Staying with Russian literature, but on a much lighter note, one student read an excerpt from War and Peace about love and laughter at a winter ball.

Inevitably and thankfully, a couple of students selected passages from Dickens’ quintessentially festive Christmas Carol, and another read a passage on Christmas from Dickens’ Sketches by Boz. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Dickens and these selections ensured a Dickensian dimension to our undergraduate Christmas celebration.

I was also delighted when another student selected to read an excerpt from Dylan Thomas’ delightful piece of poetic prose, A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I was doubly delighted when the student read it with a sense of verve and dramatic timing of which Dylan Thomas would have approved and which had the class laughing out loud. The recital did justice to the great Welsh bard’s wit and to his witness to the childhood memories of the spirit of Christmases past.

The spirit of Christmas present, or at least recently past, was evident in a number of selections taken from contemporary culture. The first was The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, a children’s story published in 2005 and later adapted as a film. My ignorance of this wonderful story exposes my ignorance of contemporary culture in general. In this case, however, I am pleased to have been introduced to a festive gem of which I had been previously unaware. Another relatively contemporary choice was an excerpt from The Giver, a dystopian novel by Lois Lowry, published in 1993.

The most contemporary selection of all, and the most surprising, was “Christmas Truce” by the Swedish rock band, Sabaton. This track from the band’s album on the theme of World War One, The War to End All Wars, is about the legendary Christmas truce in the trenches, when British and German soldiers met in no man’s land, playing football and sharing an oasis of peace in the midst of the murderous madness of the war which would not end all wars. I was unaware of either the band or the track but, my curiosity aroused, I watched the official video of “Christmas Truce” on YouTube. I was very pleasantly surprised by its unabashed Christian spirit.

Returning to more traditional fare, poetry selections included “Christmas Trees” by Robert Frost, “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti, “A Christmas Carol” and “The House of Christmas” by G. K. Chesterton, and “Ring Out, Wild Bells” from Tennyson’s In Memoriam.

One of the most delightful and entertaining selections was an excerpt from the medieval Christmas Revels, in which Saint George banters with Father Christmas in the spirit of Merrie England. Staying with the medieval theme, though in modernist form, we enjoyed St. Thomas Becket’s Christmas sermon from T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.

One student read part of Old Christmas by Washington Irving, with a headnote poem by Robert Herrick, and I was especially delighted that Hilaire Belloc’s marvelous essay, “A Remaining Christmas”, was part of our undergraduate Christmas celebration, the student reading it with appropriate gravitas. This complemented my own selection, which was Chesterton’s short story “The Shop of Ghosts”. Dr. Amy Fahey, with whom I co-taught the class, selected “Rosemary” by the American imagist poet, Marianne Moore, and I’m sure that some of the students’ selections have slipped my mind. For these sins of omission I offer a hearty and heartfelt mea culpa.

We will end with the beginning, as Mary Stuart and T. S. Eliot might say, by making the first to be last and the last to be first. A couple of students chose the Nativity narrative from St. Luke’s Gospel, thereby ensuring that the Gospel was present literally, as well as in the multifarious literary echoes which the rest of us had selected.

Taken together, these Christmas readings constitute a veritable cornucopia of festive blessings. Recalling the joyous ninety minutes I spent in the company of the students, I can’t help but wish that their selections could be brought together in one compendious volume. Were this wish to come true, it would mean that I could place this magical sharing of gifts under the tree so that others could enjoy them as much as I did.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.