When Starr Meade’s Keeping Holiday was first published by Crossway in 2008, I read the whole thing straight through. My kids were too young at the time, but I noted Jim Hamilton’s comment about his wife reading it to their son: “she read it aloud to our five year old, and he never wanted her to stop reading and raved about it every night at dinner. This book accomplished the difficult task of capturing the heart of a homeschooling mother and a five year old boy.” I’ve now started reading it to our 8-year-old and 6-year-old. The genre is something of a cross between Pilgrim’s Progress and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Here’s an interview that Crossway did with the author:
Q: Who should read Keeping Holiday? Is it really a Christmas story?
A: The best stories in children’s literature—works by C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Kenneth Grahame—are enjoyable for people of any age, and I would like to think that’s true of Keeping Holiday as well. It’s a Christmas story and more than a Christmas story.
Q: What’s meant by the title, Keeping Holiday, and what’s the basic storyline?
A: The title is a play on words. “To keep holiday” can mean to celebrate a specific holiday. That’s one meaning; how do we most fully celebrate the Christmas holiday? The other meaning has to do with the story: Dylan goes to the delightful town of Holiday once a year on vacation and would like to just stay there. Since that’s not possible, his parents tell him he’ll need to find a way to “keep Holiday—” to have it with him all year, wherever he is. Early in the story, Dylan discovers that the Holiday he always visits is not the real Holiday; there’s a larger, much more wonderful Holiday behind it. He also learns, however, that only citizens of Holiday can come and go in the real Holiday, and that only the Founder of Holiday can make you a citizen. So the story is Dylan’s visit to the real Holiday on a temporary pass, in search of the Founder and citizenship. Each adventure that he has on his quest and each character he meets shows him more of what the Founder is like, so that, increasingly, his desire for citizenship in Holiday changes into a desire to know the Founder for his own sake.
Q: But Dylan keeps hearing, “You can’t find the Founder; he finds you; he’s not just the Founder; he’s the Finder too.” What does that mean?
A: Holiday was established many years ago to honor a King who saved the town from the rule of evil, oppressive tyrants; hence, that King is called “the Founder.” Everyone who knows anything at all about the Founder tells Dylan he can’t find him; the Founder will have to find Dylan. Just as, on the first Christmas, people didn’t go get the Son of God from heaven and bring him to earth, so individual people don’t set out to find Christ and his grace; they aren’t even able to do that. Christ in his grace reaches out and saves them. Biblically, all the credit for coming to the earth as Savior and for coming to any individual as Savior belongs to Christ alone.
Q: You’ve said that one purpose of the book is to give readers a fresh way to look at the Incarnation. How does Keeping Holiday accomplish this?
A: My favorite parts of the Bible are the Old Testament prophets. They paint their word pictures in such extreme shades of dark and light that you come away from them horrified by the bleakness of the human condition and, consequently, wonderfully relieved by the hope and comfort they hold out in their promises of the coming Messiah. The experiences Dylan has—being entombed in a cave, being lost in absolute darkness, wandering across a barren winter landscape—are meant as pictures of humanity’s condition, and each individual’s condition, before the coming of Christ.
Q: What would you consider the best use of Keeping Holiday?
A: I hope families will read Keeping Holiday together, maybe even as a holiday tradition. It helps draw attention to what Christ has done for his people and how ordinary Christmas decorations remind us of those things. This could enhance a family’s worship and celebration during Advent season. At the same time, Keeping Holiday brings up for discussion many doctrinal aspects of the salvation God provides, and his ways of working in the human heart, providing a springboard for discussion of these kinds of issues on a personal level, between parents and children.
“I love it. In reading Keeping Holiday, I was reminded of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. It is delightful reading that pulls you into the adventures of Dylan and Clare and tells the story of God’s work in the lives of those who are called according to his purpose. Children from 8 to 78 will be captivated by this spellbinding story.”
—R. C. Sproul, President, Ligonier Ministries; author of The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
“This charming story should be repeatedly read and savored. It has the enduring and endearing quality of a good story—it lingers. It causes one to ponder gospel truth and to celebrate the Holy One of Holiday.”
—Susan Hunt, author of Sammy and His Shepherd
You can download an excerpt or look at it below:
