The Christmas Banquet

"First published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XIV (January, 1844), “The Christmas Banquet” shares its subtitle—”from the unpublished “Allegories of the Heart”—with “Egotism; or the Bosom-Serpent,” another Hawthorne story of the period. “The Christmas Banquet” is an allegory composed by Elliston and read aloud to his wife Rosina (and an old friend) after their reunion. The allegory presents the plight of the most unfortunate of men—more unfortunate even than the man with a bosom-serpent—the man who has no human connection to his own life, the man who can feel nothing at all. The Christmas Banquet mentioned in the title is an annual feast, funded by…