Doubtless A Christmas Carol is Dickens's best known holiday book, but The Cricket on the Hearth is a truly enchanting fairy story. Here are Dickensian tensions and Christmas spirits enough, but Want stays out on the fringes this tale around, and even the ugliest soul can change. I'd call it "A Christmas Carol Light," if not for the deepened themes of family and home, wherein lie the writer's hope for strength and redemption. As the title suggests, the fireside plays a chief role, and also the cricket, whose intermittent song is hope itself. "To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world!" Comfort and home.
The first time Kenton came home with me for Christmas was four years ago. We were not yet married, and it was not actually my home. My parents had recently retired up into Georgia's Blue Ridge mountains, and it was to their new, cozy little house that I took my then-boyfriend. Everyone was there, and it was in the days before children - a small gathering of six grownups. We ate breakfast casseroles, watched A Christmas Carol, opened gifts, and played games.
There was one game in particular. It had to do with guessing what each person would be if, say, he were a shoe (sneaker? heel? sandal?), or if she were part of a fictional family (the Brady Bunch? The Simpsons?). Social analysis meets wacky imagination: count me in. I'm pretty sure I could have kept going long after everyone else was weary of playing. In a particularly heightened moment, though, I nearly lost it - or rather, the game nearly lost me.
My turn was up, and the card, as I recall, imagined what kind of item I would be: a valuable piece of jewelry, perhaps, or a lamp. Or maybe a pair of house slippers. I didn't care who identified me as what; I was sure my beloved would recognize me for the valuable jewel I am, and I confidently watched as he laid down his card . . . on "house slipper." "I am a house shoe to you?!?" My brother, suppressing laughter, handed me the bottle of whiskey that had been gifted with the game. (My family remains exceedingly true to its merrily-imbibing German roots.) "You need some of this to calm you down?" In fact, I did not. Especially after Kenton explained himself. "I know you like to be comfortable!!"
Ah. Indeed I do. And how well the man knew me already, even then. If I have aspirations, they are small and most often homely. Today, listening to a good, old-fashioned Christmas tune in a warm, baby-quieted attic room, reading against the clank of the floorboard heater, I realized with a rush of gratitude that many of my aspirations are met right here, in this moment, this very morning: beauty, peace, comfort.
Another realization is that this blog needs order, and it shall have it. A Winter Theme. Now and into the first couple months of the new year, look for a weekly post on the topic of Comfort, fleshed out or imaged or essayed or sung in one way or another. Because Comfort gets dressed in varied garb according to the season. In this morning's weather, I find it homebodied and cozy.
In keeping, for the inaugural Winter Theme post, here's a list of items I'd call cozy, a snug fit for a mid-winter day spent this side of the frosted window. Comfort may dress a little differently this time next week, but at this Midwinter moment, I wish you words and images of comfort, with snazzy Christmas tunes to back them up. Or, in the spirit of Dickens, I wish you a blazing hearth, and may the cricket upon it never stop chirping.
1. A Very She & Him Christmas: It sounds like the holiday stuff I grew up on. Can't get better than that. (Would you like some nostalgia with your cozy?)2. Posie Gets Cozy: If you haven't stumbled upon this woman's corner of the blogosphere, do. Her gorgeous home-and-town images deliver on the title's promise. Also, she's a fan of my third cozy item:
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