Heartwarming Essays and Short Stories

Fifty Years of Christmas. edited by Ruth M. Elmquist

This is a charming vintage book of poetry, short stories, and essays from the "Christian Herald" from 1901 to 1950. Sounds preachy, you think? Well, although many of the essays and some of the stories involved the Nativity, this collection is no didactic, gloomy collection. In fact, one of them is the sweetest love story ("There Was a Star") about a man who has loved a woman all his life, but believes she is in love with his brother.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher talks about traditions in "This Must We Keep." Men in a World War II prisoner of war camp, enemies and friends, come together in "The Hour of Stars." An embittered newspaper owner finds Christmas in "A Good-Willer." Edgar A. Guest's touching poem "On Going Home for Christmas" is followed by his essay "I'm at My Best at Christmas!" which tells how he wrote the verse. "Christmas on Beacon Hill" talks about a candle-lighting custom in Boston which I wonder if is still done. And there are so many more heartwarming ones!

It's nice to go back to time when essays and stories were thoughtfully written for adults, and not just "sound bites" in juvenile-vocabulary-ridden tales from the internet in between intrusive advertisements. I like being treated like an adult.