I love this story, “The Christmas Grove” by Lucy Parr, that appeared in the Children’s Friend magazine, December 1972. Read it here. It starts out with the main character, a young girl, feeling sad, in her family’s new place, far way from her memories of Christmas pasts in snowy, piney Vermont. She longs to have snow instead of drizzly rain and a Christmas tree in her new home in Oregon. When she’s told she can’t have one, she gets even sadder. But something beautiful comes of all this. I just love stories like this about gathering. Truly, gathering with like-minded people brings joy. Gathering to create beauty and feed birds creates even more joy.

As one of the neighbors says in the story, “It’s folks getting together in friendship and caring about each other that helps make Christmas. Where you happen to live at the time doesn’t really matter.” So true!

If you love this story, you’ll love my collection of stories in my Celestial Family Devotionals Ebook, free in PDF form, over here.

Here is a picture book about decorating trees to feed the birds and celebrate Christmas at the same time. I love it! Decorating trees for the birds at Christmastime is one of those things that sounds romantic but I’m never going to get to in this life, LOL. Anyway, these stories are lovely so I’ll just vicariously decorate trees for the birds through them. That’s what’s so great about picture books! If you want more Christmas picture book recommendations then go over here.