Spirit of Christmas

Henry van Dyke (1852-1933) was an American author, educator and Presbyterian clergyman. He taught English literature at Princeton University, served as a diplomat in the early twentieth century, and wrote a good deal of poetry, essays and fiction. Today he is perhaps best remembered for a handful of seasonal works, including the story The Other Wise Man and the hymn Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, which is sung to Beethoven's melody from the Ninth Symphony.

The Spirit of Christmas, published in 1905, is a small collection that reflects his many roles as storyteller, essayist and preacher. It combines four different kinds of writing in less than an hour of listening. A dream story, The Christmas Angel, opens the book. An essay, Christmas-Giving and Christmas-Living, considers what it really means to give. A short sermon, Keeping Christmas, offers practical suggestions for living in the spirit of the festival throughout the year, and two Christmas prayers bring the volume to a close.

The pieces share a gentle, optimistic tone, and their emphasis on kindness, generosity and attention to others will be familiar to readers of the period's Christmas literature. They also say something about how the holiday was understood in America at the beginning of the twentieth century, as a time for the family and for charity.

This LibriVox recording is read by Jan MacGillivray and divided into four files, one for each part. It is a short and undemanding listen, well suited to the Advent season, and a reminder that the best seasonal writing often combines sentiment with a plain and practical wisdom.