Merry Christmas

Humor is a very subjective thing. So one is treading on thin ice when he ventures to recommend a book or movie that he thinks is humorous. But one also likes one's friends to laugh. And anyone who opposes the modern anti-European fervor is my friend. So here goes.

All of the following movies and books are in the grand European tradition of laughter. Namely, they induce a laughter that uplifts and does not degrade as the modern, filthy humor does.

The first two items on the list are films starring Laurel & Hardy, filmdom's kings of the old European comedy.

1) Swiss Miss
2) The March of the Wooden Soldiers
3) The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson. You can't go wrong with this one. This work must be shared. It can be comfortably read aloud over a period of three days.
4) The Reporter Who Made Himself King by Richard Harding Davis. The book, written by the man who wrote the short story that the Walt Disney series Gallegher was based on, is also, like The Wrong Box, too good not to be read aloud. It can be read comfortably in one or two sittings.
5) One sitting will suffice for Kipling's comic masterpiece, "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat," which can be found in the short story collection, A Diversity of Creatures, or here, online.

I'm posting this well ahead of the 25th to give anyone interested a chance to acquire and read any or all of these comic European masterpieces in time for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!