Full Description
How do you create Christmas spirit when the temperature refuses to dip below fifty degrees or when snow is a miracle that vanishes at sunrise? Held together by bonds of family, soil, and history, Mississippians share a peculiar yuletide experience in the Deep South. To capture the state's unique holiday glow, Christmas Stories from Mississippi packages writings by such greats as Eudora Welty, Willie Morris, Elizabeth Spencer, Clifton Taulbert, Barry Hannah, William Faulkner, and Ellen Gilchrist with the work of such rising stars as Edward Cohen, Carolyn Haines, and Caroline Langston. Illustrated by one of Mississippi's best known artists, Wyatt Waters, these seventeen short stories and essays reveal the wonders and sorrows of Christmastime and the special poignancy of childhood memories. With Waters's touch, the book makes the perfect gift for literary readers and anyone who relishes life in Mississippi. Christmas Stories from Mississippi opens with Welty's classic, ""A Worn Path,"" and closes with Morris's personal reflection, ""Christmases Gone, Revisited."" Between the writings of these two Mississippi literary giants are stories, memoirs, essays, and excerpts such as Spencer's ""Presents,"" Gilchrist's ""Surviving the Holiday Season,"" an excerpt from Faulkner's Light in August, Hannah's ""Sermon with Meath,"" and Taulbert's ""Quilts: Kiver for My Children."" The many storytellers and many perspectives in Christmas Stories from Mississippi share Southern experiences in which families create their own entertainment, relish and break traditions, and celebrate a season in ways no other region's families can.
Table of Contents
A Worn Path 3 (10)
Eudora Welty
From Light in August 13 (6)
William Faulkner
Clara's Star 19 (28)
Judy H. Tucker
Surviving the Holiday Season: One Woman's 47 (6)
Crusade Against Christmas
Ellen Gilchrist
Finally, John Boy 53 (8)
Chris Gilmer
Christmas 1976 61 (12)
Caroline Langston
Quilts: Kiver for My Children 73 (6)
Clifton L. Taulbert
The Morning Stove 79 (8)
Nancy Isonhood
Sermon with Meath 87 (10)
Barry Hannah
Home for Christmas 97 (20)
Charline R. Mccord
Big Red 117(8)
Jerry L. Bustin
Presents 125(8)
Elizabeth Spencer
Land of the Giants 133(14)
Carolyn Haines
From The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up 147(6)
Jewish in Mississippi
Edward Cohen
Christmas Lights 153(24)
Jacqueline Wheelock
Poets, Plumbers, and the Baby Jesus 177(20)
Marion Barnwell
Christmases Gone Revisited 197(8)
Willie Morris
Contributors 205
