Skimming through a new book of E.B. White quotations led me to a short essay he wrote about Christmas, which is luckily available online in The New Yorker’s archive section:
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. There was a little device we noticed in one of the sporting-goods stores – a trumpet that hunters hold to their ears so that they can hear the distant music of the hounds. Something of the sort is needed now to hear the incredibly distant sound of Christmas in these times, through the dark, material woods that surround it. “Silent Night,” canned and distributed in thundering repetition in the department stores, has become one of the greatest of all noisemakers, almost like the rattles and whistles of Election Night.
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While first published in 1949, it still feels relevant today. The essay was later republished in the The Second Tree from the Corner under the title of “The Distant Music of the Hounds”.
