Originally published in 1940, as a short story in Liberty Magazine, and then in this picture-book format that same year, Eleanor Roosevelt's holiday tale - reprinted in 1986 as Christmas, 1940 - has as much to tell us about the time in which it was written, as about the holiday of Christmas, and is a fascinating period piece. It is also somewhat difficult to track down, in this format - the 1940s picture-book, with illustrations by Fritz Kredel - and I had to travel to the only library in my county system that holds a copy, this past weekend, and read it in their special collections room. What fun!

The story of Marta, a young Dutch girl whose father had recently been killed in the fighting, it opens on a cold and snowy night - St. Nicholas Eve, 1940 - flashing back to the previous St. Nicholas' Eve, when Marta's father was still alive, and home on leave, and contrasting it to the current time of mourning and want. Marta, who feels that God is far away - perhaps too far to care about the troubles of a little girl - has no difficulty believing in the Christ Child, to whom she confides her hopes and dreams. Although none of the abundant feast of the previous year is left to her and her mother, there is one last holiday candle remaining, and Marta decides to use it to light the way for the Christ Child, on his journey through the dark night. It is while she is gazing at this candle, from outside her humble home - gauging how far the light pierces the gloom - that she encounters a tall man in a dark cloak, who, inquiring as to what she is doing, sets out to convince her that there is no such thing as the Christ Child, that it is silly to think a child could lead the world, or that strength could be gained through love and sacrifice, rather than through power and fear. But the stranger - 'the power' - has not counted on the strength of faith, and of hope, and though he leaves unaware of it, a great miracle has occurred before his very eyes...

Written at a time of great uncertainty and fear, when the forces of evil were unleashed in the world, Eleanor Roosevelt's Christmas story is clearly meant as a message of hope, and - although the United States had not yet entered WWII - of solidarity with the occupied peoples of Europe. No countries are mentioned in the text, and the stranger is never explicitly identified as a Nazi (a word Roosevelt never uses), but no reader of that time could have failed to understand what he represented, or the contrast being drawn between the love to be found in the Christmas story, and the forces of hatred which drove Nazi ideology. As Roosevelt writes in her brief preface, "The times are so serious that even children should be made to understand that there are vital differences in people's beliefs which lead to differences in behavior."

This explicitly didactic purpose is probably one of the reasons that Christmas: A Story has not, despite its reprint in the 1980s, become a holiday classic. Its aim, in contrasting the power of love and hatred - as exemplified by Christianity and Nazism, respectively - and encouraging readers to believe that the times of darkness in which they were then living would pass, if they had faith, and defended their beliefs, is admirable, given the events of the day, but it also means that much of the meaning of the story is tied to a specific historical moment. I suppose one could argue that there will always be times of darkness, and that the story therefore has wider relevance, and that is certainly true, up until a point. But in the end, this little book had more interest for me as an example of a story written for children during the height of WWII, than as an exploration of Christmas itself.

And little it was! I was surprised, when the librarian took it out of its locked glass case, to discover how tiny it was - smaller than my pen! - as I'd been expecting more of a standard picture-book. I was charmed by the six engraving-style illustrations, done by Fritz Kredel, whose work I recognized from one of the editions of the Brothers Grimm we had in the house, growing up. All in all, I'm glad to have read Roosevelt's Christmas tale, although my main interest was historical, rather than festive. Recommended primarily to those interested in the children's literature of the period. ( )