Jeremy L. Berg

December is here again.  The season of Advent is upon us.  We often complain about the busyness of this season full of holiday parties, shopping sprees, and endless traveling to be with our crazy families for the holidays.  Yet, we all have those special memories and traditions that we try to recreate each year and rekindle the warmth of Christmases past.

What is your tradition or favorite part of the Christmas season?

Mine is not shared by most.  The winter season and especially the days leading up to Christmas are a sacred time for me of special study, reflection and special reading assignments.  I read constantly throughout the year.  This year has been filled with more writing (blogging) than reading for once.  But what I look forward to most is carefully selecting a good book and diving in deep by the warmth of a fireplace, often reading by candle light with quiet classical music setting the mood.

The fireplace is the centerpiece of my winter fantasies.  When we purchased our first home one essential was a good, ole fashioned fireplace — not the ones you turn on with the flip of a switch.  I’m talking wood-chopping, wood-stacking, match-lighting and newspaper kindling kind of fireplaces — the kind that fill your house with the smell of smoke when the damper is left closed accidentally.

I have invited various “guests”  — usually long dead — to be my guide and teacher in years past. One of my first Christmases was spent with John Bunyan reading “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  The next year was spent with Dietrich Bonhoeffer reading”The Cost of Discipleship.”  A more challenging Christmas wasspent trying to wrap my head around Jurgen Moltmann’s “The Crucified God.” Each Christmas I try to follow the example of my seminary professor who reads through a commentary on one of the Gospel’s each Christmas season. Still, my most magical Christmas season was spent with C. S. Lewis and the fully dramatized radio theater productions of “The Chronicles of Narnia” as well as reading a biography of Lewis called “The Narnian.”  I’ve never been able to top my Christmas in the presence of Lewis.

But it’s more the mood than the book.  There is something irresistibly alluring about being holed up in our quaint little pre-world war I cottage house during a sub-zero Minnesota blizzard, sitting by a warm fireplace with hot cocoa in one hand and book in the other, with my wife nearby lost in her own (very different kind of) book. Frosted windows and 2-foot snowdrifts only add to the beauty and solemnity of the warm winter dreams that take us away into our own winter wonderland of reading. Our first house had a fireside study with my books lining both sides of the fireplace.  Our current home doesn’t let me have both fireplace and books in the same room.  But, as you can see, it is just equally as cozy.

So, now that December is upon me I have yet to choose whom I will spend this Christmas season reading.  I’m feeling a tug from the past and considering either the early church fathers (e.g., Athanasius’ On The Incarnation) or probing portions of John Calvin’s Institutes).  Do you have any recommendations?

I wish you all warm winter dreams and many cups of hot cocoa by an open fire!