“The gift without the giver is bare.” Gifts can be manufactured, some beautiful, many useful, but giving-out feelings can’t be—though they can be cultivated. The love and cheer associated with Christmas will always be the best thing about it. How often just a good word that conveys the word-giver’s generosity of spirit enriches people! I remember the “Merry Christmas, sir!” of a gray-haired woman scrubbing stone steps at a college in Cambridge, England, during the war; and recollection of her sturdy, cheerful, kind nature brightens my world. I can hear my mother’s “Christmas Gift” or “Merry Christmas” as I write these words. Whoever heard her greeting received a gift, for she meant every syllable of it, felt every tone in it. Sunrise, starlight, silence of dusk are never trite. Generous feelings and cheering words are never trite. Merry Christmas!
A brief volume from Western historian Frank Dobie.
I adore Mr. Dobie’s work [some of which is reviewed on
this blog] and t’is the season for Christmas tales so…
The first half, our Yuletide section is more a terse remembrance
than a narrative—sweet but not essential.
As for the second half of the book regarding the legendary
Jim Bowie and his fabled knife…
It is good folklore but has little to do with actual history.
Dobie presents it as such so there is no quibble with
him “making claims.”
It is a brief twofer volume—again not essential but I
am not sorry at all I spent a little time with it.
Merry Christmas!
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