I Spy Christmas: A Retrospective
12/24/2022:
I Spy Christmas is a great follow-up to the original book. Using one coherent theme helps unify all the images of the book, and make them much more evocative. Despite being the first take on this themed format, I Spy Christmas does a very good job exploring multiple aspects of its Christmas theme and evoking feelings of the holiday.
Ornaments
I Spy Christmas begins like Christmas always began in my house, with boxes of ornaments opened up. I love this scene! It’s super warm and cozy, and feels incredibly familiar. It looks exactly like how I remember opening up the big boxes of ornaments as a child. My family had a big collection of ornaments from years of gifts, and the metal ones looked exactly like this. We even had a bunch of the little birds that you’d clip onto the branches, like in this one!
As I revisit these books, I’ve tended to notice a lot of little things I didn’t notice as a child. In the simple spherical ornaments in this scene, you can see a reflection of Wick’s studio, with a big pane of light above. I think it’s really neat to see a peek into how these photos are made, especially given how polished they usually are. I like this photo a lot. It’s a really great start that sets the tone of this book quite well.
Winter Wonderland
The next photo in I Spy Christmas is the worst I Spy photo! Kind of! This scene is an odd one. As a child, I always thought this scene felt somehow different from all the others, and could not articulate why, but I think I can now.
Compared to almost every other scene in this book, the theme of this photo is kind of loose. It’s supposed to be a winter wonderland, and the deer and snowy trees help convey that feeling, but the silk with decorations hanging from it above breaks that feeling and makes it feel artificial and staged. Instead of being a snowy landscape, it’s… well, a pile of vaguely-themed props.
Just because it’s the worst I Spy photo doesn’t mean it is bad by any means, though. As I began to take my own photos, I felt inspired by this one! Unlike almost everything else in the I Spy series, the roughness of this photo made it feel like something I could have made with my skill set, at that point! In the end, this photo stands out. It might stand out for how unfocused it is, but it’s still a distinctive photo.
Window Shopping
Window Shopping is such a sweet scene made of pure nostalgia. This feels like how Christmas looks in old movies, vintage toys in the windows of snowy department stores… The town I grew up in had displays on the town green that looked like this, little dioramas of vintage toys and scenes of Santa.
I love the condensation on the window and the little bits of gathered snow on the panes, it really helps convey the feeling of standing out in the snow and looking at a Christmas scene in a local building. For me, this is one of the first incredibly evocative scenes in this book.
The Holly and the Ivy
The Holly and the Ivy is another take on the “nature up close” scene, but this one feels much more naturalistic than the one from the previous book. The snowy background stops this one from feeling completely artificial like the previous nature scene.
The doves and other animals around stop it from feeling lonely, making it more lively. It’s not a desolate, isolating winter, but a fun, cozy, pretty winter. I also love how there’s just a sprinkle of fantasy in this one, too, with the circle of little performing bears in the middle. I love this one! It’s a much better take on this kind of scene.
Winter Sports
I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I like how warm it feels, it reminds me of the feeling of coming inside after playing outside for a while in the snow, how the house feels so much warmer when you come back inside…
The worn, wooden bench and vintage clothes and toys also remind me of the same friend’s house that Bulletin Board from the first book reminds me of. It’s an alright photo, a little bit evocative, but not enough to be memorable.
Baking Cookies
What a cute, sweet scene! I love the range of colors in this one. The contrast between the vibrant icing and the undecorated cookies helps add some more fun to this photo. The placement of the colored cookies among the plain ones helps guide your eye around the picture smoothly, keeping it looking constantly in new places even without a riddle.
My family doesn’t have a tradition of making Christmas cookies, so this one isn’t quite as evocative to me. That doesn’t stop it from being a great little scene, though!
Christmas Crafts
This scene is quite like one from the first book, Arts and Crafts, but this one is a lot more interesting. For one, the perspective is lower, which gives the image a lot more depth, the piles of tinsel and cloth stretching on into the distance and covering the back edge of the frame. The materials present also have a lot more depth, with the ribbons, felt, and phials of paint and glitter coming off of the table. All of this helps make this scene feel quite tangible and real.
I find this one highly evocative as well. My family has a long-running tradition of making Christmas ornaments each year, to the point where our tree now consists almost entirely of ornaments we’ve made instead of bought. This looks like how the table looks when everybody’s making ornaments.
What a great photo! In addition to being particularly evocative for me, the depth and vibrancy and color helps it feel busy, but real. I love this one!
Santa's Workshop
This is the first take on a new, recurring scene type that will come up in a few books in the future. Not quite as many as the “nature up close” type or the “pile of vintage toys” type, but a few more scenes will focus on a workbench covered with wood, sawdust, and cute cut-out shapes.
I like how the painted toys are spread out on the bench to help guide the eye, just like in Baking Cookies. I also like how the edge of the workbench is visible and at an angle, which helps to add a lot more depth and tangibility to this scene. I don’t have a lot to say about this one, but it’s just pleasant!
Stocking Stuffers
What a cool, dynamic image! Stocking Stuffers is another scene that will be iterated on a few times in the future. I love how the giant whirl of toys conveys the energy of a child who’s really excited to see what’s in their stocking on Christmas day, enthusiastically dumping it out and sending little toys everywhere. The huge variety of toys and colors helps the scene feel really vibrant despite the simple backdrop.
I love the speed that is conveyed with the smear effect. The way the effect is achieved is by attaching all the props on a disc that blends into the background, and rotating them all while the shot is exposed on film. For being the first version of a recurring scene type, this one is great!
Antique Teddy Bears
It’s brown. So very, very brown. This one doesn’t feel particularly christmas-y to me. Sure, there’s one Santa, but otherwise it’s a lot of, well, brown teddy bears. I could see how some people could be creeped out by this one, but it doesn’t really bother me.
The composition isn’t bad by any means, it has just enough depth to not feel totally staged, but otherwise, it’s just kind of an odd, monochrome picture in the middle of the book.
Nutcracker Sweets
Nutcracker Sweets is the “floating objects” photo of this book, and it’s a cool one. The white background really makes this one stand out from the warmer, more natural tones of the rest of this book, even though it’s more in line with how a lot of the first book was presented. The subject matter of this one is also different from the rest of the book, with food and sweets. The bright colors and sweets give this image very cheerful energy, like a big holiday party!
I love how much depth the bowl adds to this scene. The objects appearing to float inside it really strengthens the optical illusion on display. This is a great one!
Under the Tree
This is, in my mind, the definitive image of this book. All the others build up to this penultimate scene, showing a cozy, busy, incredibly warm scene underneath the christmas tree.
When I was getting back into I Spy, this scene hit me harder than any others before it. For a long time, Christmas had become very transactional for me, as I became a cynical teenager who only cared about the acquisition of gifts. This image reminded me of how I used to feel about Christmas as a child. It’s not about the gifts anymore, it’s about the rituals, the actions, the loving decoration of the tree, the carefully wrapped gifts for those who are close.
The scene itself is also quite well-composed. I like the contrast between the upper and lower sections of the photo, with the intricate, detailed ornaments hanging on the tree, and the wrapped gifts and larger props on the floor. It gives the scene a good sense of balance and variety. I completely love this photo.
Silent Night
We end with Silent Night. In contrast to the warmth of the previous scene, Silent Night is a vast outdoor landscape, covered with snow, showing a tiny village with a train running through it. Though all the buildings are lit and look warm, the scene overall is cold and serene, with only angels and Santa outside, adding to the quiet and serene feel.
This is also the first version of another recurring scene type that will eventually become the focus of an entire book. This is Wick’s first scene depicting a model railroad scene, and is very well done. The quiet and serenity of Silent Night is a great note for this book to end on.
Conclusion
I Spy Christmas is a fantastic follow-up to the original I Spy book, iterating on almost all of its ideas to produce a more consistently interesting experience. Even though each image fits in with the theme, they still carry the same variety of compositions as the previous book. The theme just helps unify them into a coherent whole.
As a child, I didn’t really think that highly of I Spy Christmas, since it just conveyed how I always thought of the holiday. As I have become older, I’ve come to appreciate its portrayal of the holiday a lot more, with its focus on warmth, traditions, and the fun of winter. I Spy Christmas is the first truly excellent I Spy book.