Pater Familias

Theories, observations, and articles, by Philip Schaefer · All posts · Categories

CHRISTMAS SENTIMENT.

December 25, 2013 at 8:09 PM · Literature

CHRISTMAS SENTIMENT. One recent Christmas ritual for our family is that I read aloud CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE MORNING, a book by Pearl Buck that the family gave me a few years ago. It’s a sentimental story about a boy doing the farm chores on Christmas morning as a gift to his father. Part of the ritual is that everybody watches to see how far into this sentimental book I can get before tearing up.

I told Annalisa that I was going to post about how I tear up reading the book, and she said, fondly: “Tear up? Your throat gets so constricted you can barely talk.”