My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is

Host: The evening air was thick with the scent of snow and roasted chestnuts. Downtown, the lights of early December glimmered like fragments of memory, tangled in the city’s veins. In a narrow street, lined with shop windows and wreaths, stood a bookstore — old, stubborn, beautiful. Its wooden sign creaked in the wind: Ariadne Books.

Host: Inside, the warmth was soft and golden. Dust hung like tiny stars in the air, lit by the amber lamps that hummed quietly over the rows of bookshelves. The faint sound of jazz drifted from a corner speaker — lazy, timeless. Jack stood near the travel section, his hands buried in his coat pockets, while Jeeny traced her fingers along the spines of worn novels, her eyes shining with that particular kind of peace that only ink and paper could bring.

Host: Between them lay the quote, printed on a bookmark someone had left in a copy of The Great Gatsby:
"My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written." — Michael Dirda.

Jeeny: “It’s like a blessing,” she murmured, smiling. “A call for people to remember what they love — through words, through stories, through authors who once changed their lives.”

Jack: “Or it’s nostalgia dressed up as wisdom,” he said, glancing at her. His voice, low and dry, cut through the gentle hum of the store. “Who has time for this anymore? People don’t wander bookstores — they scroll.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the door, bringing with it a faint chime from the old bell above. The bookseller, an elderly man with glasses thick as bottle glass, smiled faintly at them before returning to his stack of receipts.

Jeeny: “That’s exactly why Dirda said it, Jack. Because the act of walking through a bookstore isn’t just about buying — it’s about slowing down, about touching the world with your hands again.”

Jack: “And wasting an hour searching for something you could find in ten seconds online.”

Jeeny: “You can’t scroll through serendipity, Jack.”

Host: Jack laughed quietly, a single breath that fogged the windowpane behind him. His reflection stared back — sharp, tired, but thoughtful.

Jack: “Serendipity is inefficient. The world runs on algorithms now — they already know what you love, maybe even better than you do. The past is gone. People want speed, not discovery.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s why they’re so lost,” she said softly, her eyes on the old shelf of classics. “We’ve turned reading into consumption. Dirda’s urging us to rediscover the human part of it — the wandering, the touching, the wondering.”

Jack: “And you think nostalgia will save us?”

Jeeny: “No. But memory might.”

Host: The light from the street filtered through the frosted window, painting soft patterns on the floor — words and shadows tangled together. The smell of paper, of dust and ink, lingered like perfume from another century.

Jack: “Look around, Jeeny. These shelves are dying. Most of these titles don’t even exist in print anymore. Soon, all this,” he gestured to the rows of books, “will be data — compressed, downloadable, disposable.”

Jeeny: “You talk like a man who’s afraid to be touched by something simple. Why does everything have to be efficient to be worthwhile?”

Jack: “Because life’s too short to be inefficient.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack — it’s too short to live without wonder.”

Host: Her voice carried through the aisles, soft yet trembling with conviction. A young couple nearby turned briefly, smiling, as if they’d overheard something sacred.

Jack: “You talk about wonder like it’s something you can pick off a shelf. But it’s manufactured, Jeeny. The whole idea of the bookstore as a temple — it’s romanticism. People buy that image the same way they buy the books.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But not everything has to be pure to be true. Think about it — when’s the last time you wandered without purpose? No destination, no goal, just… curiosity?”

Jack: “That’s a luxury, not a virtue. People are trying to survive, Jeeny, not find meaning between old paperbacks.”

Jeeny: “And yet, survival without meaning is just endurance. You know that.”

Host: The wind whispered again, shaking the old window frames. The lamp above them flickered briefly, then steadied. There was something almost sacred in the silence that followed — like the pause between two lines of poetry.

Jack: “You sound like my mother,” he muttered, almost smiling. “She used to drag me to this secondhand shop every winter. Smelled like mold and dreams. She’d lose hours in there, searching for authors she already knew. I never understood it.”

Jeeny: “Did she find what she was looking for?”

Jack: “No,” he said, looking down. “But she always found something else. Something she didn’t expect.”

Jeeny: “That’s it,” she said softly. “That’s Dirda’s point. You go looking for one author, and you end up finding a piece of yourself you didn’t know was missing.”

Host: The old bookseller coughed lightly, glancing up at them with a knowing smile, as though he’d heard every word. He turned back to his ledger, his pen scratching faintly, like rain on glass.

Jack: “You make it sound holy.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it is. Maybe wandering through shelves of words — touching spines, opening pages, smelling the ink — maybe that’s how we pray without realizing it.”

Jack: “Pray to what?”

Jeeny: “To memory. To continuity. To the people we used to be when we read those authors the first time.”

Host: The clock behind the counter ticked softly. The city outside blurred beneath the falling snow, as if time itself had decided to pause.

Jack: “So you think walking through a bookstore is resistance?”

Jeeny: “Yes,” she said. “A quiet one. Against forgetting.”

Host: He said nothing. Instead, he reached for a book from the shelf beside him — an old copy of Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The pages crackled faintly as he opened it, the paper dry but alive.

Jack: “Funny,” he said. “I used to read this to feel less alone. I thought it was about struggle, but now it just feels like… home.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe you’ve already answered yourself.”

Host: The snow thickened outside, falling in slow, deliberate flakes. Inside, the world was still — just the faint murmur of the jazz, the tick of the clock, and the fragile sound of a man remembering how to feel wonder.

Jack: “You ever think bookstores are like old friends? You don’t visit them often, but when you do, they remember you.”

Jeeny: “Yes,” she said, smiling. “They remember your silence.”

Host: They stood there, two shadows surrounded by books, by ghosts of stories, by the living pulse of language itself. Jeeny reached for another book, handed it to him — a collection of essays by Michael Dirda. He turned it over, read the first line aloud, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jack: “‘Books are our anchors, our wings, and sometimes the only mirrors we can bear to face.’”

Jeeny: “See? Even he knew. It’s not about nostalgia, Jack. It’s about belonging.”

Host: He nodded slowly, then smiled — that small, rare smile that broke through the armor of cynicism.

Jack: “Alright,” he said. “Maybe I’ll buy one. For old times’ sake.”

Jeeny: “No,” she said, shaking her head gently. “Buy one for the man you’re still becoming.”

Host: Outside, the snow stopped. The world looked new — quiet, washed clean. Through the glass, their reflections stood side by side: two souls, two silhouettes surrounded by shelves of countless voices. And for a moment, time didn’t move.

Host: The camera pulled back, leaving the store glowing like a small lantern in the cold dark street — a shrine of stories, memory, and the simple miracle of still caring enough to walk among words.