Best Spirit of Christmas Books

 Although I love the Grinch story as much as the next person, I really appreciate Christmas books that express genuine human feelings and frailties and lack the glitz of the commercialized holiday season. I look also for gratitude over greed, family and friends over worldly expectations. Both of the following Christmas stories are set in the past and take place in Appalachia. Teachers may use these books to teach the reading comprehension strategies of making text-to-text connections or visualization.

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story
by Gloria Houston
Pictures by Barbara Cooney
Ruthie waits for her father to come home from war in time for Christmas as promised. It is their family's turn to provide the church its Christmas tree that she and her father picked out months before.  In the meantime, the school prepares to put on the Christmas play, and since her family is providing the tree, the little girl gets the part of the heavenly angel. Her mother also waits and worries because there is no money for cloth for the angel dress until her husband returns. The night before Christmas eve finds them still alone, so in the night they take their old horse and bring back the tree. Ruthie's mother then cuts apart her wedding dress to make an angel costume and an angel doll for a special gift for Ruthie. The family honor is preserved, and the play goes off beautifully without Ruthie's father. Just as everyone leaves the church, Ruthie's father arrives and envelopes her in his arms, his love and protection the finest gift of all. An angel doll who looks just like Ruthie is placed at the top of the church Christmas tree from that year forward. Barbara Cooney's illustrations are at the same time understated and warmly evocative, and the prose enables the reader to smell the balsam, feel the angel's satin dress, and hear the singing in the cold night air. An angel doll makes a perfect story prop for this moving tale.

Silver Packages
by Cynthia Rylant
Paintings by Chris K. Soentpiet
There was once a "Santa train" that brought gifts to poor children in remote parts of West Virginia every year at Christmas time. Cynthia Rylant wrote this book based on stories of that train. In return for his own good fortune, every Christmas a rich man brings silver wrapped packages and tosses them out to the children waiting along the railroad. A young boy is always there to catch his silver package, and every year he wishes for a doctor's kit so he can pretend to be a doctor. Each year, the package contains warm boots, woolen mittens, or a winter hat, but no doctor's kit, leaving him disappointed. As he grows up, he learns to appreciate the value of those gifts and credits them for helping him to make it and become what he always wanted to be, a doctor.A black doctor's bag is shown in the last pages of the book, indicating his success.

Story Props for "The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree" and "Silver Packages"