GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS?

The Book Review section of the Dec. 4 Los Angeles Times contained the most malevolent piece of writing I have seen in a long time: “Beware of Holiday Kitsch” by Anne Lamott. Throughout the article, the writer proclaims her utterly bleak view of existence, in which the Christmas season is “the time when death is most visibly apparent in our lives” and books “where things make sense and love holds” and in which the past is shown “as it ought to have been” give her a chill because they remind us of happier times when “life had not yet become a living hell.”

The intent of the piece is to warn us against romantic or sentimental books that make us feel happy and cozy, because they will deafen us to the unrelenting pain and rage that we are all supposed to feel in these “hard and frightening times.” The writer would have us believe that an hour spent with a coffee table book would lure us into giving up the fight for “what is right, for nonviolence and love and the belief that all people are created equal, that everyone be regarded with the same degree of respect.” (Incongruously, in spite of these pleas for tolerance, she manages to sprinkle throughout the article a host of irrelevant and vicious slurs upon Republican leaders from Newt Gingrich to Ronald Reagan.)

How is such a malevolent view of life acquired? I believe the answer is contained in Lamott’s self description as a “left-wing Christian crackpot.” She has swallowed a double dose of anti-life belief systems: a political philosophy that inculcates guilt for ever feeling happy and cozy as long as there is still one person somewhere who is hungry or homeless, and a religion that teaches true happiness and bliss are experienced only after death and are not to be expected in this vale of tears.

JAMES CROSS, CHATSWORTH

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I strongly resent Anne Lamott’s expression “old uncle Jesus.”

This is insulting to millions of Christians and Moslems. It is also repulsive to even nonbelievers who have any respect for other people’s views and beliefs.

If Anne Lamott does not like this letter, she is welcome to call it “kitsch.”

SONJA M. TANNER, DUARTE