Rena J. Mosteirin's latest book of poetry, Experiment 116, came out in October from Counterpath Press. She owns Left Bank Books in Hanover and teaches creative writing workshops at Dartmouth College.
Planning my wedding in 2009, I kept going back to this passage from Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women:
Neither silk, lace, nor orange flowers would she have. "I don't want a fashionable wedding, but only those about me whom I love, and to them I wish to look and be my familiar self."
That’s exactly what I wanted for my wedding, so when my fiancé and I went to the Book Arts Studio in the basement of Baker Library to typeset, print, and roll out our wedding invitations, we included the Alcott quote. Years later, we discovered the magic of Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, where volunteers dress up like members of the Alcott family and offer tours of the house that the Alcotts once occupied. At the end of the tour, they sing Christmas carols in the parlor. This trip quickly became our holiday tradition, in part because Little Women invites you to create rituals.
Many movies have tried to capture the magic of this book and they all begin with the book’s iconic first line, spoken by Jo, the tomboy main character based on Alcott herself: Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents. This often gives people a sense that this a holiday story, and it is, partially, but it’s so much more. Little Women follows four sisters growing up in Massachusetts during the Civil War, as their difficult years of poverty and uncertainty are sweetened by sisterhood. I invite you to give the book a read if you never have, a re-read if it’s been a while or give it as a gift for the holidays. I go back to this book every year and I always find something new and delightful.
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