The Christmas Box

When the movie The Christmas Box came on TV in 1995, my whole family tuned in to watch. That's because we are all pretty tremendous fans of Richard Thomas (yes, I had to look up his real name; I've called him John Boy since I could talk), and also because my father, who has a reputation for being Ebeneezer Scrooge, also has a soft spot for Christmas movies. It's strangely incongruous.

So, the movie came on, we watched it, we liked it, and life went on.

Many many many years later, I found out The Christmas Box was a book first. Who knew? It's been lurking on my mental to-read list ever since, but I finally took it off the mental list, went to the library, and read it.

It was brilliant.

This is another short book; I read it on Saturday afternoon. The TV version was jazzed-up and dramatized, mostly by making the elderly woman a lot crankier than she is in the book. The blurb on the back calls it "the touching story of a widow and the young family who moves in with her". Apart from it being more accurate to say it's the touching story of a young family and the widow they moved in with, I'd call that a good assessment.

I like this one because it is a feel-good story. (Yes, that's my favourite kind.) It's about the love of a family. It's about remembering what is most important in life. And it's about how some hurts never go away.

So, yeah, another feel-good happyish-times review. What? Real life is sad enough.

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