Warmth for the Holidays

Andrew Beckham’s “The Lost Christmas Gift” is a beauty, a holiday charmer and a book within a book.

	“The Lost Christmas Gift” with text, illustrations, photographs, maps and watercolors by Andrew Beckham Princeton Architectural Press, $25, 40 pp.

It is a journal in story form with illustrations, photographs, maps and watercolors that complement the storytelling.

The “lost gift” of the story is a handmade book mailed by a father, who was in the military overseas, to his son, Emerson Johansson. Emerson did not receive the package until decades later. By the time he opened it, his father had died.

Beckham put together an amalgam of story and images about a hike in the Colorado woods that the young Emerson and his father had made to cut a spruce for a Christmas tree. They are caught in a snowstorm and are forced to spend the night in a natural shelter in the woods.

Then “a man, bent and fierce,” appears behind their bivouac. The man disappears but leaves behind a small bundle of switches. Soon another man, “covered in soot and ash like a chimney sweep,” appears. He, too, is quickly gone, but leaves small lumps of coal in a small pile.

A few of the switches and coal lumps miraculously provide enough fire to keep Emerson and his father warm through the night.

More surprises await them in the morning – two pair of carved, wooden cross-country skis and ski poles. Wait. A fellow on skis has made a cameo appearance. Soon he’s seen in the sky above them, in a sled pulled by reindeer.

Emerson and his father make it home safely, but, alas, without a tree in tow. No worries, his mother announces.

Beckham, the author-artist of “The Lost Christmas Gift,” teaches photography and printing at St. Mary’s Academy in Englewood, Colo.

Besides the Collected Works event, Beckham will attend a reception that opens an exhibit of art from his book from 5-7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 24, at Chiaoscuro Contemporary Art, 702 1/2 Canyon Road, Santa Fe.

The exhibit, titled “The Lost Christmas Gift: Images and Artifacts,” will be up through Dec. 29. It has original papers of the journal, packaging and letters accompanied by a selection of limited edition, mixed-media works from the project.

David Steinberg is the Journal’s Books editor and an Arts writer.