Christmas
What would a story with Christmas in the title that is about Christmas be without a metaphor directly applying to the experience of Christmas? Well, not much of a story, let’s put it that way:
“The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood."
The Moment
Metaphor informs the moment that is The Moment in the story. Some call it heartbreaking while others castigate it as crass emotional manipulation. Of course, in some cases, two things can be true at the same time:
The man looked up at me, initiating eye contact for the first time. "We'll be burying him in it," he said softly.
The words fell like hammers. I looked down, avoiding the lifeless gaze of his eyes.
Philosophical Contemplation
On the other hand, critics attacking the novel are also fond of undermining its attempts at philosophizing. In this case, one must admit they have a point while those who see no flaws in the story are put on the defensive. Some things, after all, are simply too obvious to be reserved for attempted deep thinking. It is, perhaps, the “perhaps” that makes this near-assertion so egregious to the book’s critics:
“Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life.”
Imagery
Metaphor is put to much better use—well, better use, anyway—when the author sticks to using it as a tool for creating imagery. The imagery here is not exactly an example of deep thought, either, but somehow it seems far less egregious:
“The air is filled with soft, beautiful strains of music flowing as sweet and melodic as a mountain brook.”
Coinage
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a very famous proverb. America’s greatest economist, Thorstein Veblen, turned the saying on its head by coining the phrase: “Invention is the mother of necessity.” As near as can be gathered from a quick and not particularly intensely conducted internet search, the first and only usage of the following metaphor occurs in this book even though it is presented as if it were widely used:
“As necessity is the mother of profit, he began renting a line of men's dinner jackets with great success.”
