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Book Review: The Christmas Mystery
Jan. 4th, 2025 12:36 pmAs a child, one often has one’s own names for favorite books and movies. In my mind, Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius was The Lupine Lady, An American Tail was Fievel (and A Land Before Time was of course Littlefoot), and Jostein Gaarder’s The Christmas Mystery was The Magic Advent Calendar.
At the beginning of the book, young Joachim finds a handmade advent calendar in the bookstore. The owner lets him have it for free, and when Joachim opens the first door, a thin slip of paper falls out, beginning the story of a little girl named Elisabet who follows a stuffed lamb out of a department store because she wants to pet its fleece.
Thus Elisabet begins a pilgrimage: she is running backwards in time and southeast through space, picking up angels and shepherds and wise men along the way as they all travel, to quote the shepherd Joshua, “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!” They are going to witness the birth of the baby Jesus.
As Joachim reads each installment, he becomes convinced that the advent calendar is indeed enchanted: each time he opens a door and reads another installment, he finds new details in the picture on the advent calendar itself. Surely they’re appearing as he meets the characters in the story? As a child I believed this just as much as Joachim, and also loved the suggestion that the story in the advent calendar was true or at least built on truth—that not only John the in-book creator of the calendar, but Jostein Gaarder himself had discovered a series of unusually similar angel encounters throughout history and woven them into a story.
(This was around the same age I had a so-called nonfiction book called The Flight of the Reindeer, which had a serious science-y discussion of the aerodynamics of reindeer antlers which enabled them to fly. Did I believe this? No, not exactly, but the idea so enchanted me that I also didn’t exactly not believe.)
As an adult, I am fairly sure that the picture on the magic advent calendar is simply an example of the magic of art, where the longer you look at a picture the more details you see. I’ve also relinquished the idea that Gaarder built the story from a series of historical angel tales featuring angel processions that all mysteriously included sheep and Wise Men and a little blonde girl.
But in recompense, I’ve come to a greater appreciation of Gaarder’s artistry in constructing a story that functions so perfectly as an advent calendar: it’s exactly 24 chapters long and it really does work best if you read one chapter each day of advent, although it’s hard to stop at the end of each chapter! And I’ve learned a greater appreciation for Elizabeth Rokkan’s work as a translator. I often find books in translation a bit stiff, but this one is supple and fluid, and although I can’t compare it to the original Norwegian, Rokkan has created a lovely storybook rhythm with certain repeated phrases and ideas: Joshua’s aforementioned “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”, or the idea that beautiful things like flowers are “part of the glory of heaven strayed down to earth.”
It also occurred to me for the first time on this reread that this book is extremely Christian. Since our heroes are literally going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem to see the birth of the baby Jesus, one might reasonably ask how I failed to notice. Some of this can probably be chalked up to the general dimness of childhood, but I think part of this also lies in the way the story is told: as a wonder-tale, a magical adventure, which offers postulates about how things work in its magical universe but doesn’t demand that you accept them as general truths in the workday world. It would like the reader to consider that perhaps we as a species should stop killing each other, but also it just wants to tell a fun story about a little girl chasing a runaway toy lamb back through time.
At the beginning of the book, young Joachim finds a handmade advent calendar in the bookstore. The owner lets him have it for free, and when Joachim opens the first door, a thin slip of paper falls out, beginning the story of a little girl named Elisabet who follows a stuffed lamb out of a department store because she wants to pet its fleece.
Thus Elisabet begins a pilgrimage: she is running backwards in time and southeast through space, picking up angels and shepherds and wise men along the way as they all travel, to quote the shepherd Joshua, “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!” They are going to witness the birth of the baby Jesus.
As Joachim reads each installment, he becomes convinced that the advent calendar is indeed enchanted: each time he opens a door and reads another installment, he finds new details in the picture on the advent calendar itself. Surely they’re appearing as he meets the characters in the story? As a child I believed this just as much as Joachim, and also loved the suggestion that the story in the advent calendar was true or at least built on truth—that not only John the in-book creator of the calendar, but Jostein Gaarder himself had discovered a series of unusually similar angel encounters throughout history and woven them into a story.
(This was around the same age I had a so-called nonfiction book called The Flight of the Reindeer, which had a serious science-y discussion of the aerodynamics of reindeer antlers which enabled them to fly. Did I believe this? No, not exactly, but the idea so enchanted me that I also didn’t exactly not believe.)
As an adult, I am fairly sure that the picture on the magic advent calendar is simply an example of the magic of art, where the longer you look at a picture the more details you see. I’ve also relinquished the idea that Gaarder built the story from a series of historical angel tales featuring angel processions that all mysteriously included sheep and Wise Men and a little blonde girl.
But in recompense, I’ve come to a greater appreciation of Gaarder’s artistry in constructing a story that functions so perfectly as an advent calendar: it’s exactly 24 chapters long and it really does work best if you read one chapter each day of advent, although it’s hard to stop at the end of each chapter! And I’ve learned a greater appreciation for Elizabeth Rokkan’s work as a translator. I often find books in translation a bit stiff, but this one is supple and fluid, and although I can’t compare it to the original Norwegian, Rokkan has created a lovely storybook rhythm with certain repeated phrases and ideas: Joshua’s aforementioned “To Bethlehem! To Bethlehem!”, or the idea that beautiful things like flowers are “part of the glory of heaven strayed down to earth.”
It also occurred to me for the first time on this reread that this book is extremely Christian. Since our heroes are literally going on pilgrimage to Bethlehem to see the birth of the baby Jesus, one might reasonably ask how I failed to notice. Some of this can probably be chalked up to the general dimness of childhood, but I think part of this also lies in the way the story is told: as a wonder-tale, a magical adventure, which offers postulates about how things work in its magical universe but doesn’t demand that you accept them as general truths in the workday world. It would like the reader to consider that perhaps we as a species should stop killing each other, but also it just wants to tell a fun story about a little girl chasing a runaway toy lamb back through time.
