Caldecott Monday: The Polar Express

[osprey_archer]

Caldecott Monday! The Polar Express! We owned this book when I was a child, although it was only one of piles and piles of Christmas-themed picture books and not as bright or redolently red and green as some of the others, so I only read it occasionally.

I did quite like it, though - especially the description of the food on the train, "candies with nougat centers as white as snow" and "hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars." Gosh. That makes me want a cup of cocoa right now, never mind it's really too hot for it. In fact the whole train ride, the train slicing ghost-like through the dark woods at night, ever northward toward a city rimmed in lights...

As a child I also loved the bit about the bell that only rings as long as you believe in Santa - so magical - but I feel a bit more jaundiced about it now - the entire cultural obsession with teaching children to believe in Santa, and mourning it as a tragic end of innocence when they cease to believe, as inevitably they must? Is it kind of like getting a kid a pet so they will learn an Important Lesson about Death when it dies? Except in order to teach an Important Lesson about Disillusionment instead, and possibly an Important Lesson about Being Gullible if they keep believing long after the other children.

Possibly I'm just a curmudgeon.

I have never seen the movie version of this book. Should I remedy this? Or is the train ride north far less mystically beautiful in the movie than in my head?

Comments

[sovay]

I have never seen the movie version of this book. Should I remedy this? Or is the train ride north far less mystically beautiful in the movie than in my head?

I believe the animated version is considered to be a landmark in uncanny valley creepiness, so I think you're all right skipping it.

[osprey_archer]

That is probably why I didn't see it the first time around. Good on you, past self!

[gaudior]

I feel like people want children to believe in Santa Claus very much out of their own nostalgia for how they imagine childhood to have been. It's not actually what childhood is like, because being a kid is significantly more confusing and overwhelming than that (there is so fucking much to understand, and just because children haven't yet made sense of things like death and sex and etiquette doesn't mean they're not trying). It seems like a mean trick to play on someone-- you're spending all your time and energy trying to make sense of this huge complex world, and we're going to throw off all your calculations with bad data? For fuck's sake.

The fact that kids manage it as well as they do is actually pretty impressive.

(Also, have I formally said hi yet? I friended you because you're friends with sovay, but I've been admiring your fanfic for a long time! Hope that this is okay?)

[osprey_archer]

Hello! It's always nice to see new friends. It's been interesting moving to Dreamwidth actually, because the social configurations seem slightly but nonetheless sometimes significantly different here - new people! New groups!

There's a quote in Paris to the Moon - let me go look it up - "the romance of your children's childhood may be the last romance you can give up." It's in the context of the author's move to Paris with his wife and young son, not Santa specifically, but I think the Santa thing is related: believing in Santa signifies innocence and security and snow falling softly outside the frosted windowpanes etc. etc., and people want to wish that on their children.

[missroserose]

I always feel mildly left out of the "did you believe in Santa" conversations, because my parents approached it much the same way they did religion - they explained to me that Santa was a representation of the spirit of Christmas, but that a lot of my peers would probably believe in him as a physical person, and it was okay if I did too. I don't think I ever did, but we had fun pretending at times. Honestly, I'm kind of grateful they didn't try to fool me into it - even as a kid, I was a pretty strong critical thinker, and the holes in the story bothered me even though I knew it wasn't real. How could so many other kids believe in something so clearly unrealistic? But as we well know, people don't tend to be rational when it comes to belief...

Considering it further (since, yes, I also read this book multiple times as a kid), the "bell that only rings if you believe in Santa" bit never bothered me, because I read it as an allegory - even as he grows older, the narrator honours Christmas in his heart and tries to keep it all the year (as it were). I wonder if this isn't the root of the collective adult obsession with believing-in-Santa-Claus stories; it's not that we feel we should believe in Santa per se, but what he represents; maintaining that sense of joy and wonder and benevolence and kindness even when adult responsibilities and disillusionments get in the way. It's harder than it sounds.

I saw the movie and personally loved it, although it was many years ago. I did hear a lot of people were creeped out by the animation, though, so it seems to have been a matter of personal taste. I do have one of the collectible oversized cocoa mug/saucer sets that they sold alongside it; I'm not really into collectibles, but my mother is, and invariably some of them spill over onto me when she runs out of room. (I'm holding out for her nearly-complete Spode Green Garland china set, haha.)

[osprey_archer]

Oh gosh, a Polar Express mug sounds like the perfect Christmas season hot chocolate mug. Designed for sitting in front of a fire (real or imaginary) and sitting hot cocoa with great fat marshmallows!

Most of the distressing Santa realization stories I've heard are ones where the kid got into an argument at school about whether Santa existed; maybe the humiliation of believing after everyone else has stopped, and looking silly, is what gets to people.

[missroserose]

Yeah, I think you're right about the humiliation aspect. I'm grateful to my parents for sparing me that, at least.

It totally is a perfect holiday mug! And I use it far too rarely - I think I've pulled it out maybe twice in the past eight years. (In fairness, four of those years were living in the desert, where it only rarely gets hot enough to justify fires and hot cocoa.) Like I said, collectibles aren't really my thing...but maybe I should make an effort.

[asakiyume]

I actually have never seen the book, though I've seen pictures from it, or the film.

Re: Santa Claus, he bothered me in every way from as far back as I can remember. I didn't have a way to articulate it--this was clearly the thing everyone said happened, but I'd seen the pictures, and it was a tiny sleigh, and he was supposed to give gifts to EVERYONE from that sleigh? And also, I was an anxious kid who knew about wars, and it was apparent that Santa wasn't bringing stuff to these kids. It definitely seemed like magic the way my stocking filled up over night, though. I didn't know how to reconcile all that stuff. I don't recall finding out all of a sudden; I think I just came to gradually be aware.

As a parent, I imitated my own parents in really playing down Santa, but not to the degree of telling them he didn't exist. Not that I would have put it this way, but I guess what I was aiming to do was make it clear it was a sort of tale, but one we all decided to go along with, sort of a legend-of-our-people type thing.

[osprey_archer]

I don't remember a big Santa realization moment either. I really liked the idea of Santa - well, not so much Santa, but the whole secret elf city on the North Pole & flying reindeer thing; who doesn't like stories about creatures that should not be able to fly flying?

But I don't remember believing so much as wanting to believe, if that makes sense.

In any case I think presenting Santa as a legend-of-our-people is far more sensible than pushing the Santa narrative super hard at kids. Less disillusionment that way. And the idea of Santa can be a bit magical, like the idea of fairies or dryads, as long as it's not all tied up in "but the adults lied to me!"

[ladyherenya]

I'd heard of the movie but didn't know it was also a book.

I've been interested in the believing in Santa conversation, because my parents never did the whole Santa thing with me. I do remember a time when I had concluded that Santa couldn't come to our house because we didn't have a chimney, as my friend's house did, but that didn't last long. And once I properly grasped that Santa wasn't real, I never felt like I was missing out. Christmas and getting presents were still exciting.

[osprey_archer]

Yes - what I've gotten out of this conversation is that it's best to present Santa to children like you would any other magical story, witches or fairies or so forth. As long as the parents aren't pushing the "Do you believe in Santa?" narrative too hard then most kids will figure it out on their own and not be terribly traumatized about it.

[silverusagi]

I never really liked the movie. It's like... nothing happens. But that's what happens when you turn a picture book into a 90 minute film, IMO.

[osprey_archer]

Jumanji turned out okay, but the filmmakers only borrowed the basic concept from the picture book and made up an entirely new plot for it. The Polar Express doesn't lend itself to getting a totally new plot quite the same way.