Qui-Gon Jinn reads The Polar Express

I've had Star Wars on the brain this holiday season, as you can tell from my last x number of posts.

So it was appropriate that none other than Qui-Gon Jinn read us The Polar Express on Christmas Eve.

Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 storybook is a Christmas tradition that I have brought from my own childhood into my children's childhoods. But there are specific rules around this tradition; the story gets read only once each year, that being Christmas Eve.

Except not this year, it appeared.

Despite reminding myself not to forget it when packing for our trip to Tasmania, I did indeed leave behind our weathered copy of the story -- the one from my childhood -- on our bookshelf at home.

I remembered it at dinner on Monday night, and immediately felt dismayed.

Then yesterday I got an idea. What if the internet could read it to us?

Of course the internet could do that. In fact, Liam Neeson could do it.

The first result when I searched "polar express storybook" on YouTube was, indeed, a 16-minute reading of the story by the world's most prominent Irish actor. And though there were some things he said earlier in the year that made me sort of want to cancel him, well, it's Christmastime, a time for forgiveness.

Plus, I'd just heard his voice -- twice now -- in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

So we pulled up to the hearth of my laptop -- my wife, my kids, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law -- and listened to Neeson's marvelous brogue read my beloved Christmas Eve story, the one that distills the magic of Christmas in a way that never quite extinguishes, no matter how old you get or how many stressors undermine your holiday season.

And even though there was music, which didn't always work, and even though some pages were lingered on longer than it seemed they needed to be, and even though the camera moved across the page rather than giving us a full still image of each glorious page in Van Allsburg's book, it was my traditional fulfilled, and Christmas is all about tradition.

What's more, the looks on the faces of my family seemed to involve genuine joy, both those who knew the story well and those who were hearing it for the first time.

Merry Christmas, and may the force be with you.