Lemony Snicket Contemplates Christmas Miracles in The Lump of Coal

In The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story, Lemony Snicket of A Series of Unfortunate Events fame turned his talents to a skewered Yuletide tale. With The Lump of Coal, he does it again, once more anthropomorphizing an inanimate object associated with dinner. While Latke is as much a Chanukah story as a Christmas one, The Lump of Coal is rooted more exclusively in Christmas. It’s a strange story with elements that are both uplifting and amusing, though I would say it ultimately is less successful than its predecessor.

The titular lump of coal is not a happy entity. Brett Helquist, Snicket’s collaborator for A Series of Unfortunate Events, depicts him as a downcast fellow dressed to the nines in a business suit. Like the latke, he is on a quest for self-discovery. His journey for purpose takes him to an art gallery, a Korean barbecue and a street-corner Santa Claus. At every stop, he is disappointed by the inauthentic nature of what he finds. The man at the gallery has a phony accent. The woman at the barbecue sells food that isn’t Korean. And the man who at first seems to be the Jolly Old Elf is nothing more than a cranky stepfather. Is there any hope for a poor disillusioned lump of coal?

Toward the beginning of the book, Snicket notes, “Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.” Despite the rather distasteful subject of the metaphor, this is a surprisingly upbeat sentiment for Snicket to espouse. As someone who revels in all things warm and fuzzy, I liked the fact that the book begins and ends on an unabashedly optimistic note. Nonetheless, it seems slightly out of sync with Snicket’s style. Moreover, the more positive tone seems directly tied to the fact that this is probably the least humorous of the Snicket books that I have read. The occasional laughs derive mostly from odd pairings of words or images; for instance, the Korean barbecue doubles as a secretarial school. But nothing in the book made me laugh out loud.

The Lump of Coal is a Christmas story, but the ultimate emphasis on gratitude makes it just as fitting for Thanksgiving. The uncharacteristically cheerful ending veers toward the preachy as Snicket tells us that everyday miracles include getting enough to eat, getting to spend one’s days and evenings doing whatever one pleases and finding true friends. These are indeed miraculous things, even if we seldom see them as such, so while Snicket may not be at his zingiest here, his message is an important one to ingest.