The Special Collections Christmas Selections

                Tis the season, everyone!  Can’t you feel it in the air?  The crying students furiously searching for books and typing their papers here in the library, all with matching Java City cups…yes, finals season is truly the most magical time of the year.

                Jokes aside, here in Special Collections we want to get into the holiday spirit, and perhaps you too would like a breather from those five tests you have coming up.  So I went searching through our collections and found an eclectic array of Christmas-themed books and items that I think are definitely worth checking out.  So without further ado, I present to you “The Special Collections Christmas Selections”!

They look so at home next to each other, don't you think?

                This first book is entitled Stories of Christmas and the Bowie Knife, and if that seems like   There’s hardly a connection or a proper defense given for it—rather, it seems the author just wanted to include his history of the knife to fluff out the book a bit.  Said author is J. Frank Dobie, a Texan folklorist and newspaper columnist.  Most of his best remembered work was much like the included Christmas stories: tales from his youth about the life and culture of rural Texas in the late 19^th century.  Bowie Knife backstory aside, reading about his typical Christmas experiences and how greatly they differ from todays is definitely worth the short break out of your day that it will take.

kind of a strange combination to you, let me assure you: it definitely is.

                However, if you’re looking for a slightly more recent story, That Terrible Night Santa Got Lost in the Woods is set in Larry L. King’s childhood in the Depression Era.  It details one tale in particular about his father –all around it is a more focused, dramatic tale than Dobie’s Christmas memories, and comes in at about the same length.  Both are wonderfully illustrated and paint a picture of a beloved holiday from a different but not so long off time.

If you enjoy King’s childhood tale, you maybe also want to read A. C. Greene’s A Christmas Tree.  Being at about the same age, he tells another Christmas story about a father from the 30s.  A bit less dramatic and more humorous than the last, he details the year his father chose a cedar tree that, much to the young author’s delight, was much too big to display in their small home.  I think many of us who celebrate Christmas and buy or cut down live trees can relate to the sentiment of wanting that impressively massive tree that just cannot be chosen, especially as children.  Despite these three books showing the change that our culture has taken around the holiday season, they also reflect those things that have stayed the same, which makes them doubly interesting.

If the Christmas tree tradition is more your interest than history, you may be interested in Mimi Cavender’s poem Cedar: A Hill Country Christmas Night.  This locally published work is about Cavender’s personal experience with the tradition of searching for and cutting down a Cedar Christmas tree.  The poem lends a certain air of mystery and magic to the affair, and complete with the seemingly self-taken photos, it is a very personal look into a widespread tradition.

When I saw the title, I knew this was going to be the best one.

Of course, I’ve saved the best for last.  If the history of sentimentality of all these other The Spectral Santa Claus.  This published book is a collection of stories written in the yearly Christmas letters of former Trinity mathematics professor Harold T. Davis.  The stories are all quite varied, from the titular tale of the ghostly Santa Claus appearing on Christmas night that is said to grant the wishes of the pure of heart, to the musings of his own pet birds Dickie and Sugar, to the ongoing tales of the immortal Saint Nick helping historical figures of all sorts, Spectral Santa Claus has a lot to offer.  If you come for nothing else, I think you should definitely give this book at least a glance.

selections isn’t your thing, or even if it is, I would recommend you come in and take a look at

So, next time you find yourself staring blankly at that ten page paper you’re struggling to find sources for, come take a break in Special Collections and refresh your mind with a bit of Christmas cheer.

We hope to see you soon!

Post by Darcie Marquardt, Class of 2017