- Someone will ask, with frustration and anger twisting their features, "Where is your humor book section?"
- Someone will complain because the Christmas cards and calendars aren't on sale yet.
- Someone will request book gift suggestions for a relative who doesn't like to read.
- Someone will threaten their kids with "no presents" if they don't start behaving "right now!"
- Someone will say, "Merry Christmas," with intent to provoke, and I'll say, "Merry Christmas," in return because it generates a smile and sometimes even a "thank you."
- Someone, cast adrift in the gift-buying maelstrom, will still be looking for a good read and ask for a recommendation.
We are a curious species.
Before hurling myself into the deep end of the holiday retail pool, I wanted to wrap up a year in which many books were published and many dire economic predictions were made for our industry. Where could I turn for perspective?
I opted for a little time traveling. Readers solved the mystery of the fourth dimension long ago, even if physicists still struggle with it. You want to travel in time? Read. Oddly, the best advice for this journey comes from the film version of the Time Machine, in which Filby so memorably tells George, "Relax, try to relax. You've all the time in the world."
Sometimes we forget, but readers do have all the time in the world. Literally. At their fingertips. As 2007 draws to a close, I'm turning the clock back a century to give you a peek at the 1907 Christmas season, as seen in the pages of the New York Times.
Yes, they were just as confused as we are. Among the headlines with a familiar ring from 1907 were "Holiday exercises held in a way to satisfy all religious beliefs: sectarianism is avoided," "No war toys for children," "Employees in financial district don't expect usual big bonuses," "Record Christmas travel" and even a meteorological prediction: "Cold for Christmas, says weather man: Yesterday's storm gave buyers a late start, but the stores were crowded before noon."
There was a report on an exhibition of the year's books at the National Arts Club, noting that a similar event 29 years before, called a "Book Fair," had been less successful, since "the buying and selling of books at wholesale and retail was the principal object." Happily, in 1907, the "mere buying and selling of books has been prohibited in this year's exhibition by a ruling of the Library Committee of the Arts Club, the desire of the latter being to divest their enterprise, as much as possible, of the purely commercial features which it might otherwise take on."
My favorite discovery came from "An Englishman's views on an American Christmas," in which the writer recounted his adventures "buying--buying--buying as if the Christmas 'stores' had just opened and were due to close again in six minutes. It's all so American, but none the less Christmassy. They get the right spirit, too, but like everything else in America, they get it in a hurry and all at once. . . . here the idea seems to be to wait until the last minute, then draw all the money from the bank and rush to the Christmas shops to spend it wildly--recklessly--joyously--madly. It's pandemonium! But it's great, old chap. It's Christmas!"
In the December 28 edition of the Times, the headline "Boston's holiday book trade keen" introduced an article on bookshop sales in that city, where "the holiday season has left a Fezziwig smile, and a comfortable willingness to erect a handsome tombstone over the dead past of 1907."
With the turn of a virtual page, we're back in the present and at the end of our year. I want to thank the great people I interviewed for this column in 2007, met at trade shows, conversed with by email and phone; and I want to especially thank all of you for reading.
However you choose to celebrate this weekend and next, I wish you a merry Christmas, a new year filled with extraordinary books and, of course, a "Fezziwig smile."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)