Christmas Jars [Paperback]

Jason F. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

Keep some tissues on hand for this holiday story that is sure to be a Christmas classic!

Where had it come from? Whose money was it? Was I to spend it? Save it? Pass it on to the someone more needy? Above all else, why was I chosen? Certainly there were others, countless others more needy than I...Her reporter’s intuition insisted that a remarkable story was on the verge of the front page.

Rising newspaper reporter Hope Jensen uncovers the secret behind the "Christmas Jars" – glass jars filled with coins and bills anonymously given to people in need. But Hope discovers much more than she bargained for when some unexpected news sets off a chain reaction of kindness and brings above a Christmas Eve wish come true.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a plot reminiscent of Penelope Stokes's The Blue Bottle Club and Angela Hunt's The Note, a journalist happens upon a human interest story that winds up teaching her lessons about love and forgiveness and renewing her own faith in human kindness. On Christmas Eve, twenty-something Hope Jensen is quietly grieving the recent loss of her adoptive mother when her apartment is robbed. The one bright spot in the midst of Hope's despair is a small jar full of money someone has anonymously left on her doorstep. Eager to learn the source of this unexpected generosity, Hope uses her newswoman instincts to find other recipients of "Christmas jars," digging until her search leads her to the family who first began the tradition of saving a year's worth of spare change to give to someone in need at the holiday. Wright commits some rookie mistakes in style and pacing; the novel veers heavily toward melodrama at some junctures, and he tends to show us and tell us about his characters. Still, the heart of this novella is its transformative message about the power of giving, a compelling theme that calls to mind books like Pay It Forward and The Kingdom Assignment.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Beautifully written. I believe The Christmas Jars tradition will change lives." -- Richard Paul Evans, New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box and Finding Noel

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 122 pages
• Publisher: Shadow Mountain (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590384814
• ISBN-13: 978-1590384817
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (173 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Fiction > General
  • #8 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > United States > General
  • #83 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > General > Contemporary

More About the Author

Jason Wright is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USAToday bestselling author. He is also a political commentator and the co-founder of http://www.politicalderby.com, a popular website for political junkies.

Articles by Jason have appeared in over 50 newspapers and magazines across the United States including The Washington Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Forbes. He is the author of The James Miracle (2004); Christmas Jars (2005); The Wednesday Letters (2007); Recovering Charles (2008), Christmas Jars Reunion (2009); Penny's Christmas Jar Miracle (2009); The Cross Gardener (2010); The Seventeen Second Miracle (2010); and The Wedding Letters (2011).

Jason is also a popular speaker who speaks on the origin of the Christmas Jar movement, the value of service, the lost art of letter writing and many other topics. (Click here to learn more about booking Jason for your event.)

Jason has been seen on CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, and on local television affiliates around the country.

Jason is from Charlottesville, Virginia, but has also lived in Germany, Illinois, Brazil, Oregon and Utah. In 2007, while researching Virginia's Shenandoah Valley for his novel The Wednesday Letters, Jason fell so in love with the area that he moved his family westward from northern Virginia into the heart of the Valley.

Jason is married to Kodi Erekson Wright. They have two girls, two boys, and are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to be Christian to love this book, March 14, 2007

By 

Matt J. Kessler (Charlottesville, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christmas Jars (Paperback)

This is a fantastic little book with a tremendously moving story. We have bought and distributed at least a dozen copies to friends, family and strangers. The story inspires each reader to perform a specific random act of kindness (remember that term?) in the form of a Christmas Jar. Immediately after everyone in our family had read the book and checked out the true Christmas Jar stories on the Internet (don't do so until you read the book), we set up our first Christmas Jar (Chanukah Jar). Imagine, Christian or Jew, it is still a "CJ." Our CJ will be one of our "Mitzvahs" or good deeds for the 2007 holiday season. Every night when we empty our change into the jar, we contemplate who we might give it to this December. Our book gifts have sprouted other CJs and hopefully when the movie hits the theaters this fall there will be a tremendous response and many more CJs for deserving souls.

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Little Book, Big Message, November 23, 2007

By 

Sam Sattler (Spring, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christmas Jars (Hardcover)

Christmas Jars is a little book with a big message about the Christmas season. In an age when Christmas gift giving has become more of an expensive routine than a heartfelt pleasure for many people, Jason Wright offers an alternative that recaptures the spirit of the season.

When young newspaper reporter Hope Jensen experienced one of those horrible Christmas Eves that are often written about in newspapers like hers, she had no reason to believe that anything good would come from the experience. Getting through her first Christmas without her adoptive mother was going to be hard enough already but, when she returned to her apartment wanting nothing more than to sleep the rest of the day away, things would get worse. Hope found her apartment trashed by burglars, something that seems to happen all too often on Christmas Eve.

Finding herself somewhere between bursting into tears and throwing a tantrum, Hope was saved from doing either when she discovered a small jar stuffed with coins and paper currency that had mysteriously appeared just inside her apartment door during all the excitement. There was nothing to indicate its source or why it had been left for her. Smelling a newspaper story, and in need of something pleasant on which to focus, Hope Jensen decided that she would solve the mystery of her Christmas jar.

What she discovered about the Christmas jar tradition in her town, and what she learned about herself in the process, is the heart of this Christmas story. It is a story about strangers giving gifts to those who need them most, and how those who received the jars on one Christmas often gave Christmas jars of their own to others on the next.

Christmas Jars is a tale reminiscent of a 1940s black and white movie in the way that many of its characters are a tad too perfect and too ready to forgive. The length of the book, a short 122 pages, does not allow Wright to flesh out his characters or their story and that is a shame because he has created characters worthy of more attention. Perhaps that is meant to be part of its charm but the book would have been much stronger and would have had more of an impact on the reader if its characters had been more completely developed. But the real point of this book is its message, an inspirational one that will be retold this fall as a "major motion picture." Here's hoping that Christmas Jars and its movie version start a new tradition of Christmas Eve giving that is passed from one generation to the next.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The power of giving., April 16, 2007

By 

Tonya Speelman "Hoarder of books" (Goldendale WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Christmas Jars (Hardcover)

What a wonderful tale about giving and receiving. Perfect for Christmas time. It tells of a little baby that was left inside a Chuck's Chicken and is found by a single woman, Louise, who raises her. Hope one day wants to become a journalist for the paper. Just as her dream is about to come true, her mother passes away from cancer. She is robbed, but the night of the robbery someone leaves a jar full of change.

Curious about who did this kind act, Hope sets out to investigate, and write a column for the paper, hoping to make it big with this wonderful story about others giving jars full of change and money to others. What she embarks upon is something different.

You will shed a tear with this one, and it will stay with you forever. What a neat idea!