AN EXCEPTIONAL memoir that speaks with wit and grace to the perils of Christmas and self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas xerox). Illustrated with annual Christmas card photos of the author as a boy.

“In towns like Minneota, the solid front of Christmas habit brought even the atheists to church on Christmas Eve. A Hindu could not have escaped appearing in the manger scene, toasting the holiday afterwards with garishly decorated butter cookies dunked in thin coffee.” —Faces of Christmas Past

“Minnesota’s finest prose stylist, tiny Minneota’s big Bill Holm, happily (for us) returns to print with this slight, elegant meditation on Yuletide on the prairie.”  —Mpls St. Paul magazine