Happy Christmas from the Clarks!

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost

Between 1947 and 1956, Frost, a native of Vermont, wrote a series of children's books about the Clark family, who have a small dairy farm in northern Vermont: parents, three children, Toby, age 12; Betsey, age 9; and Johnny, five and a precocious (and sometimes annoying) poet. In the first book of the series, Windy Foot at the County Fair, Toby, a budding artist, is given a Shetland pony named Windy Foot. He also meets Leticia "Tish" Burnham (who's planning to become a doctor), and the two children become fast friends. Now it's Christmas, Tish and her dad Jerry are coming to visit, and the whole family is full of anticipation.

Plus there's a renegade bear wandering the area and one of the Clark cows is about to birth a late-in-the-year calf.

This is hygge at its purest: simple family doings on a late 1940s independent farm, much hard work, but much fun as well, home-cooking, collecting greens for Christmas decorations, horse-and-buggy and horse-and-sleigh rides, carol singing on the town green, Christmas shopping in the general store...with a few hair-raising adventures thrown in for good measure.

The Clarks are fine folk to spend Christmas with! I do it every year.

The Windy Foot Books