How to Stuff Some Spiritual Depth Into the Stockings

Celebrating the holidays without expensive gifts is a little like taking television out of the house: good for your children in the long run, but probably not worth their immediate disappointment.

But you can devote one stocking, or one night of Hanukkah, to something more spiritual than Sega or scooters. Ideas:

For books, Chaim Potok, a rabbi and novelist, is famous for “The Chosen,” the story of the friendship between a secular Jew and his Orthodox friend; but he’s even better in the sequel, “The Promise.”

Lucy Kaylin’s “For the Love of God” takes a nonfiction look at convent life; Ridgefield native Mark Salzman’s “Lying Awake” has won acclaim.

“Maskerado” is a memoir of Nazi-occupied Hungary by Tivadar Soros, father of the financier George Soros, and translated--from Esperanto--by former University of Hartford President Humphrey Tonkin.

Religious experience is hard to capture on the page, and nobody has done it better than James Baldwin, wayward stepson of a Harlem Pentecostal preacher. “Go Tell It on the Mountain” is his thinly veiled memoir of being a boy preacher in Daddy’s church. Clifton Johnson’s “God Struck Me Dead,” conversion narratives of ex-slaves, offers powerful real-life descriptions of the spirit possession that Baldwin describes.

Not provocative enough? Try professor Mark Jordan’s “The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism.” Or Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop”; Cather was less Catholic, but no less gay, than Jordan.

John McGreevy’s “Parish Boundaries” and Robert Orsi’s “Thank You, St. Jude” are treatments of recent American Catholic history. John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope,” about Pius XII, will get the reader angry, either at the pope or at the author who excoriates him.

Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things” offers counsel on debunking psychics, dowsers and ufologists. Lawrence Wright’s “Remembering Satan” shows what happens when fundamentalist religion swerves into unfounded accusations of satanic ritual abuse. Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian” gives believers a brilliantly hard time.

Religious magazines, from the mainstream Christian Century to the Jewish feminist Lilith, make fine gift subscriptions. Books & Culture is the Christian New York Review of Books. Christianity Today is the glossy magazine for evangelical Christians. Tikkun, once the hip bible of leftist Jews, has lost its flavor but remains the best 1960s magazine founded in the 1980s.

For music, it’s hard to beat religious classics. Besides Handel’s “Messiah,” some great religion-themed music is Jacques Halivy’s 1835 opera “La Juive”; Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio”; and Mozart’s “Requiem.” If you want to go 20th century, invest in Marian Anderson’s “Spirituals” or Mahalia Jackson’s “Christmas With Mahalia.”

For Hanukkah, try Chava Alberstein’s “Yiddish Songs” or the Klezmatics’ “Rhythm and Jews.”

Seasonal movies include “Miracle on 34th Street” and “A Christmas Carol.” For comedy, check out “Keeping the Faith” with Ben Stiller and Edward Norton; “Christmas Vacation” with Chevy Chase ; the English film “Priest”; and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” if only for the Christmas in Los Angeles scene.

Bibliofind.com (https://www.bibliofind.com) and abebooks.com (https://www.abebooks.com) list inventories of stores that sell used books. Your church or synagogue may have a holiday store--and it may provide gifts enough for two stockings, even three.