“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo . . .” The irony — the beautiful irony — of Louisa May Alcott’s opening words in Little Women is striking, as the ultimate message of the book is quite the opposite of its iconic opening line. Readers of Little Women simply begin a journey that leads to a boldly empowering expansion of the heart. We follow along with the March sisters as they learn to care for others, even while struggling with their own desires and disappointments, and we identify with their experiences. Whether enacting a play for an audience in their parlor, or preparing to give their Christmas breakfast feast to a needy family, our mind’s eye envisions the girls’ widening realization that caring for something other than self and sharing what gifts they possess are far more fulfilling than receiving presents.
If you were asked to supply a few words describing the American gothic fiction author Nathaniel Hawthorne, it’s probably safe to assume ‘funny’ would not be
among them.
Known for his dark romances full of guilt, torment, suffering, and sin, with nary a happy ending to be found, it seems quite improbable that anything even remotely humorous could emerge from this brooding cobbler of words.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was not the originator of the romantic ideals known as Transcendentalism. Nor was his premier essay, Nature (1836), the first publication to set forth the philosophy. Emerson was, rather, the most successful public voice of New England Transcendentalism in the nineteenth century. Dissatisfied with his traditional ministry, Emerson embarked on an untried profession as a lecturer, essayist, and poet; gaining an international reputation. His eloquent and provocative prose resonated with a young American republic yearning to define itself against the time-honored past. Emerson turned his personal search for meaning into a national paean for a self-actualized identity. Nature was closely followed by his controversial “American Scholar,” “Divinity School Address,” and iconic “Self-Reliance.”
On September 6, 1847, Henry Thoreau left his small house at Walden Pond and moved back into the town of Concord. Having lived at Waldon Pond for over two years, he was, he would write, “a sojourner in civilized life again.”
In the early 1960’s a high school freshman watched a quiz show, “College Bowl.” Little did he know how that random act would change his life. Many years later, he tells the story: “The moderator asked what noted book began with the following words. Before he had said fifteen words, one of the college whiz kids gave the correct answer — Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Then the moderator read the complete sentence, which captivated me”
It was the first line in Thoreau’s iconic work: “When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I have built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.”
Henry’s sunflowers greeted me as I walked the path to the old farmhouse. This is a peaceful place – this house where Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817. He lived here only eight months. The cold summer caused all the crops to fail and his family had to abandon the farm and move to Concord center where his father ran a store. It was difficult making ends meet in those days. Life was hard. The family moved around, to Chelmsford then on to Boston before returning to Concord for good when little Henry was five. So Henry David Thoreau grew up in Concord, though not on this farm where he was born.
In the mid-1830’s, a new word entered the American lexicon; Transcendentalism. It was a word that was vague and confusing, a word that seemed mystical, spiritual, and possibly even blasphemous. Even today, 170 years later, Transcendentalism is still misunderstood, and many people have a hard time explaining what it was and what it means.
Lexico.com defines Transcendentalism as
“an idealistic philosophical and social movement which developed in New England around 1836 in reaction to rationalism. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures.” Simply put, it is the idea that God is present in all things, that we are surrounded by divinity. All of nature is divine, and therefore, since man is a part of nature, we have the capability to be divine as well.
In 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter that would become one of the most famous pieces of correspondence in American literary history.
That year was a difficult time for the adolescent country. Already sharply divided over the issue of slavery, “free soilers” and pro-slavery factions were quickly disintegrating into bloody violence. The ongoing gold rush and westward expansion was continuing to displace native populations, while the same year, and without irony, a white, anti-immigrant party in Cincinnati would attack a local German-American neighborhood for being foreigners.
Each year, more than 100,000 people visit Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House. This December 25th, millions more will have the chance to learn about Louisa May and her amazing family through the lens of Sony Picture’s newest presentation of the classic book Little Women.
“‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’” This opening line from Little Women has linked Louisa May Alcott with Christmas for the past 150 years. In keeping with the spirit of the novel, Alcott penned dozens of short stories about the true meaning of Christmas, loosely modeled after Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Like Dickens, Alcott sought to teach her young readers about the virtues of giving versus receiving.
