Resumo de Christmas In Atlantic Canada: Heartwarming Legends, Tales, And Traditions

Like most books about Christmas, Christmas in Atlantic Canada explains the reasons behind our festive traditions?the twelve days of Christmas, the Yule log, the tree. Other books might present them in greater detail and with more supporting research, but Joyce Glasner?s book is unique in its local flavour. Weaving in quotations from old letters and other documents, explaining how customs such as mumming became adapted to this region, and relaying stories told to her by a variety of local people, she presents Christmas with an unmistakably Atlantic Canadian air.

The book?s introduction recalls how a Saint John man drove his cab through a vicious storm to deliver transplant organs to Halifax. It is a fitting preview for a book that contains a rich assortment of stories. Collected from old written accounts or gathered from first-hand interviews, Ms. Glasner?s Christmases span the centuries, from Champlain?s first Canadian Christmas to the great Christmas blizzard of 1970. Some of the stories are heroic and some are rather commonplace, but they all have the human touch that makes them compelling. They?ll have you calling up your own ghosts of Christmases past.

Santa Claus makes his inevitable appearance in two stories in which the children of isolated communities were delighted by their first contact with the jolly saint. Christmas trees are lost and found and caught on fire. And poor or lonely people receive memorable gifts?handmade cradles for two sisters in the Depression, a new uniform and a pair of winter boots for a homesick RCAF corporal, and carefully selected parcels for a family of children who thought Santa Claus was going to pass them by.

A slight thread of tragedy also runs through this book, in contrast to the happy ending expected for Christmas stories. The Newfoundland man beaten senseless by mummers does not have a last minute recovery, shipwrecked travellers are not always found in time, and no Ebenezer Scrooge shows up to provide a Christmas meal for a struggling family in the interior wood of Nova Scotia. This is how life often is, but it does run counter to the books' subtitle of "heartwarming stories."

In these times of chilly relations between the US and Canada, it's good to be reminded of positive associations. Not the least of these was the tremendous response from the US after the Halifax Explosion. Halifax has said an annual ?thank you? to Boston, beginning in 1971, in the form of a massive Christmas tree. If you?ve ever wondered how the tree is chosen and what ceremony accompanies it on its trek to Boston, you will find that information here. You will also see a historic link in Aileen Dixon and her participation in the tree lighting ceremony. Mrs. Dixon was the daughter of Vince Coleman, the train dispatcher who managed to relay the information of the disaster to incoming trains before he died in the blast.

Like the other books in Altitude Press? Amazing Stories series, Christmas in Atlantic Canada is brief and sharply focused. It is certainly a diverting book, one that you could find in your stocking and spend a lazy afternoon with when the Christmas turkey is taken care of. Some of the stories will move you with their accounts of generosity, some will make you thankful for what you have, and some will just make you smile.

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