The Time Between
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is too often cast as a mere prelude to some more magical season. Time passed, though, is still time gone, and it is for us to make of any span of life something more memorable than the humdrum of early-winter droning.
If Ridgeview were positioned to determine the holiday traditions of the country’s denizens, it would likely be an imitation of Iceland’s Jólabókaflóðið. What a word! It translates as the Christmas book flood, and it began during the Second World War when paper was less strictly rationed in Iceland relative to other goods that might have been given as gifts. As a consequence, every year since 1944, Icelandic booksellers have published Bókatíðindi (a book bulletin) in the leadup to the holiday and mailed it to every home. People use the catalogue to order books for friends and relatives, which they then open on December 24 and promptly read them while drinking hot chocolate or Christmas ale.
Ridgeview does not have the privilege of establishing national traditions, but it is both an unabashed champion of giving and an unapologetic defender of reading. If we can be the domestic sponsor of a tradition of giving reading, we will feel cozily at home.
The bookshop in our lobby, which is our own little paean to bibliophily, is intended to seduce, tickle, and intrigue. It is a safe harbor in an insane world, a haven from lunacy and extremism, a gentle introduction to a love of language and illustration, and an entrée to a world of poetry, exulted thought, and comic observation. It is what a bookshop should be: a foray into the unexpected, the unknown, the unread, and the unfamiliar. To open a book and silence the world without is an experience to be enjoyed year-round, but it is one that we have an opportunity to share with others more now than at other times of year.
Whether the recipient is marveling over the stories of Robert McCloskey or laughing at bedtime over Bishop’s The Man Who Lost His Head, or learning history (and a little about mankind) in Sutcliff’s novels, or the hard-to-shop-for aunt is giving Agatha Christie a first go, or your hoity-toity-has-read-it-all friend is diving into Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, a book is a gift worth giving for itself and for all it might inspire. It is not, let us hope, a gift given for the giving. That is to say, a book is not typically given for the sake of giving something. The thoughtfulness in its choosing defies that tendency, and unlike other gifts, any choice says something about both the giver and the recipient. Moreover, such gifts typically better withstand the ravages of time and regifting.
What does this leave us with besides a shameless promotion of our little bookshop? Hopefully, it is also an inducement to think deeply and heartfully about those in our orbits over this time between and to try, at least a little, to bring laughter, reflection, and contemplation into their lives. There are, of course, activities other than reading that might do this, but few are so Ridgeviewian as reading.
Happy (almost) holidays and thank you for being here with us and perusing our shelves.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
