Faces of Christmas Past - Hardcover

Holm, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890434027 ISBN 13: 9781890434021

Publisher: Afton Historical Society Pr, 1997

Synopsis

FACES OF CHRISTMAS PAST is an engaging, middle-aged look at the perils of Christmas, our own self-imposed burdens of ritual duty (like the newsy Christmas Xerox), and the more unsettling fact that successive Christmases, more even than New Year’s, mark the passing of our life from childhood to death. "Old Christmas card photos show us how we’ve aged," says author Bill Holm, "reminding us that, though time may curve in Einstein’s physics, in our small life it is a straight line to white hair and bifocals."

Holm also reminds us of the great consoling ritual of music, so rich and full of feeling at Christmas. Our best defense against age and death may be singing, he says, so we’d better open our mouths with courage and spirit to let the songs come.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Holm (1943-2009) was born in 1943 in Minneota, Minnesota, and, after an absence of twenty years, lives there again. He taught in the English Department at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota, and when he wasn’t teaching he traveled—sometimes to Madagascar, sometimes to South Dakota. He practiced the piano, harpsichord, and clavichord, and wrote. He is the author of six books, two of poetry and four of prose. Landscape of Ghosts (1993), with photographer Bob Firth, explores the prairie landscape that is often the scene of his essays. In his last book, The Heart Can be Filled Anywhere on Earth (1996), he tells stories of immigrant Icelanders in his hometown of Minneota. Like Zorba, he often said he will have to live to be a thousand years old to finish reading the piles of books that cram his TV- and computer-free house, and to travel to the strange places that have roused his curiosity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Afton Historical Society Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1890434027
• ISBN 13: 9781890434021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 63