Book Reviews : Eternal Christmas Joy Sent From Australian Outback

Christmas at Longtime by Hesba Brimsmead (Angus & Robertson/Salem House: $12.95)

So many simplistic, cute and ordinary books about Christmas are published each year that it is a special delight to read one that is individual, sensitive and appealing to readers of all ages.

Teddy Truelance is a winsome heroine, a typical 10-year-old girl, but from a particular family, time and place: Australia in the early years of this century. Longtime is “way out back” in the Blue Mountains and so the Truelance Family has to be its own community. There aren’t any neighbors as we know them today. Because of their isolation, the older children are scattered. Mark is in Sydney, going to high school. Ella and Patsy go to high school from Grandmother Wilkins’ house. Boo studies the violin at the conservatory.

“ ‘They’ll soon be home for Christmas,’ ” Brimsmead writes. “Teddy could skip to the words, walking with mother in the garden.”

Family celebrations, exciting as they were, were simpler a generation ago, but there is something eternal about The Truelance’s observances of the holiday: “The sound of Christmas,” writes Brimsmead, “was Mother’s gentle singing as she worked in the kitchen.” Teddy’s mother made Christmas pudding, full of spices, and spices were the smell of Christmas.

Reasonable and Seasonable

It’s amazing how reasonable and even seasonable the Truelance Christmas picnic is, with the children overeating potato salad. Potato salad is a summer dish for our family, and here, it serves as a reminder that Christmas comes in midsummer in Australia.

“Christmas at Longtime” has no plot in the ordinary sense. It is simply one family’s celebration of Christmas in the early years of this century in a place far away and a time long gone. Even so, Teddy has thoughts about Christmas that come to almost all children sooner or later.

“Teddy had outgrown, in a way, her belief in Father Christmas,” Hesba Brimsmead writes. “Yet, in a broader sense, she never did.” Nor do most of us. Certainly I have not, and perhaps this is why I found “Christmas at Longtime” so appealing, with the understanding that much that makes life worth living cannot be explained in terms of provable facts. Like Teddy, we need to mature into rejoicing in a sense of fantasy as a vehicle of truth so that life, with all of its sorrows and joys, can be seen as a marvelous adventure.

Teddy’s Christmases may have been very different from mine, but I easily identified with Teddy’s Mother and Father, their love of their children, and their occasional lapses of understanding. It is Mother who keeps the spirit of Christmas alive in Teddy’s heart, Father who helps her understand the meaning of presents and giving with love and care.

Too Many Gifts

Teddy runs into the age-old problem of having spent so much of her allowance that there is not enough left to buy everybody presents. Father pays her two shillings a week for lighting the fire in the back of the sawmill in the morning, and shoveling and carting away the sawdust that gathered under the circular saw. “Presents are not the point,” Mother said. But Teddy was heartbroken. Father saved the day by saying, “After Christmas you can cart more sawdust and earn more money. And in the meantime I’ll put them On the Account.”

Teddy’s parents even saw to it that the children visited the great Silver Train and the Grand Hotel, whose elegance and grandeur was a far cry from the simplicity of life at Longtime. They even went inside the train--oh, what excitement!

‘Too Overawed’

“Teddy was too overawed to utter.” Her cup ran over when Father ordered a lemonade for Teddy, a beer for himself, and knew how to tip the awesome waiter.

“Christmas at Longtime” is a wonderful bedtime book to share with the whole family. It will give older brothers and sisters a chance to enjoy Teddy’s Christmas as they share it with the younger ones.