It’s December and time for the monthly LWD Art Appreciation selections. This year we are reading classics, exploring a variety of types of art, architecture and design, listening to opera and watching some of the all-time best films.
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ART APPRECIATION
December 2025
Classic Literature
A Christmas Story
by Jean Shepherd
The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.
This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”?
The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.
Note: Many of us are doing our best to avoid purchasing from Amazon and a number of other large corporations, for a variety of reasons. I recommend checking the public library or purchasing books from local book stores if you have them in your area. If not, Bookshop.org is a great option.
Art/Architecture/Design
Norman Rockwell
An extraordinarily prolific artist, Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) produced some 4,000 paintings in his lifetime, not including a prodigious quantity of commissioned editorial, commercial, and advertising work. His death in 1978 was regarded the loss of a national icon, an artist who, like no other, celebrated the American Dream.
Shunning experimentation and avant-garde techniques in favor of effective composition and relatable subject matter, Rockwell created wholesome, homely paintings with accessible and aspirational appeal. Neat, quaint, and typically jovial, his subjects included classrooms, prom scenes, and Thanksgiving feasts, while his most long-standing projects were covers for The Saturday Evening Post magazine and calendars and covers for the Boys’ Life publication of the Boy Scouts of America. Imbued with optimism and patriotism, the work foregrounds classic professions such as doctor and teacher, as much as the conservative stalwarts of military, family, and faith.
Hailed by President Gerald Ford as a “beloved part of the American tradition,” Rockwell’s works reveal as much about his own talents as they do about the story of 20th-century America. This fresh artist introduction from TASCHEN brings together key paintings and illustrations from his celebratory and sunny portfolio, as well as some more unusual works tackling the underside of the United States, to understand an integrally American artist, and the values and ideals that shaped his success.
Articles:
An Artist in His Studio: The Enduring Vision of Norman Rockwell (Historic Trust for Historic Preservation)
Relatives of late artist Norman Rockwell push back on DHS use of paintings (NPR)
Opera
La Traviata
A tragic opera written by Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi, La traviata follows the story of Violetta (a high-class courtesan in 19th-century Paris) and her passionate love affair with Alfredo (a young nobleman). (Read more here)
Spotify Playlist:
Classic Film
A debonair angel comes to Earth to help an Episcopalian bishop and his wife in their quest to raise money for the new church. (IMDb)
Watch free on YouTube:
I have now been doing this art appreciation series for three years. Together we have explored classic films, poetry, short stories, literature, art, architecture, classical composers, jazz composers, and opera. I hope you have found this as enlightening as I have and that you were inspired to seek out additional information along the way.
But all good things must come to an end. This is the final post in the LWD Art Appreciation series. I’m hoping to do some other type of series in 2026 although I haven’t decided what that might be. In fact, I’m open to suggestions!
LINK TO PREVIOUS ART APPRECIATION POSTS…
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