"Connie Willis - Miracle and Other Christmas Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

And, yes, I am talking about Hans Christian Andersen. He invented the whole three-hanky sob s
whose plot Maxim Gorki, in a fit of pique, described as taking a poor girl or boy and letting them "f
somewhere under a window, behind which there is usually a Christmas tree that throws its radiant sple
upon them." Match girls, steadfast tin soldiers, even snowmen (melted, not frozen) all met with a fate they
we) didn't deserve, especially at Christmas.
Nobody, before Andersen came along, had thought of writing such depressing Christmas stories.
Dickens, who had killed a fair number of children in his books, didn't kill Tiny Tim. But
Andersen, apparently hell-bent on ruining everybody's holidays, froze innocent children, melted loyal
into lumps of lead, and chopped harmless fir trees who were just standing there in the forest, minding
own business, into kindling.
Worse, he inspired dozens of imitators, who killed off saintly children (some of whom, I'll admit,
pretty insufferable and deserved to die) and poor people for the rest of the Victorian era.
In the twentieth century, the Andersen-style tearjerker moved into the movies, which starred Mar
O'Brien (who definitely deserved to die) and other child stars, chosen for their pallor and their abili
cough. They had titles like All Mine to Give and The Christmas Tree, which tricked hapless moviegoers
thinking they were going to see a cheery Christmas movie, when really they were about little boys
succumbed to radiation poisoning on Christmas Eve.
When television came along, this type of story turned into the "Very Special Christmas Episode" of va
TV shows, the worst of which was Little House on the Prairie, which killed off huge numbers of childr
blizzards and other pioneer-type disasters every Christmas for years. Hadn't any of these authors ever
that Christmas stories are supposed to have happy endings?
Well, unfortunately, they had, and it resulted in improbably sentimental and saccharine stories
numerous to mention.
So are there any good Christmas stories out there? You bet, starting with the original. The recountin
the first Christmas (you know, the baby in the manger) has all the elements of great storytelling: d
danger, special effects, dreams and warnings, betrayals, narrow escapes, and—combined with
Easter story—the happiest ending of all.
And it's got great characters—Joseph, who's in over his head but doing the best he can; the wise
expecting a palace and getting a stable; slimy Herod, telling them, "When you find this king, tell me whe
is so I can come and worship him," and then sending out his thugs to try to murder the baby; the ambiv
innkeeper. And Mary, fourteen years old, pondering all of the above in her heart. It's a great story—no w
it's lasted two thousand years.
Modern Christmas stories I love (for a more complete list, see the end of this book) include O. He
"The Gift of the Magi," T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi," and Barbara Robinson's The Best Chris
Pageant Ever, about a church Nativity pageant overrun by a gang of hooligans called the Herdmans
Herd-mans bully everybody and smoke and cuss and come only because they'd heard there were refreshm
afterward. And they transform what was a sedate and boring Christmas pageant into something extraordina
Since I'm a science-fiction writer, I'm of course partial to science-fiction Christmas stories. Sc
fiction has always had the ability to make us look at the world from a different angle, and Christmas
exception. Science fiction has looked at the first Christmas from a new perspective (Michael Moorc
classic "Behold the Man") and in a new guise (Joe L. Hensley and Alexei Pan-shin's "Dark Conception").
 It's shown us Christmas in the future (Cynthia Felice's "Track of a Legend") and Christmas in space
Bradbury's wonderful "The Gift"). And it's looked at Christmas itself (Mildred Clinger-man's disturbing
Wild Wood").
My favorite science-fiction Christmas stories are Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star," which tells the story o
Christmas star that guided the wise men to Bethlehem, and Thomas Disch's hilarious story "The Santa
Compromise," in which two intrepid six-year-old investigative reporters expose the shocking scandal b
Santa Claus.
I also love mysteries. You'd think murder and Christmas wouldn't mesh, but the setting and the possi
of mistletoe/ plum pudding/Santa Glaus—connected murders has inspired any number of mystery wr