Product Description
Author: Pearl S. Buck adapted by David T. Warner
About the Product: In this adaptation of “Christmas Day in the Morning,” Rob looks back on his boyhood and remembers giving an unusual gift of self—a gift that filled him with Christmas joy. Now, fifty years later, Rob realizes he can still give a gift from his heart. The original Pearl S. Buck story, published in Collier’s magazine in 1955, concludes with the older Rob writing a letter of gratitude and love to his wife. As he does, Christmas joy is awakened in him once again. The final pages of this book provide a place for you to write your own letter of gratitude and love—a letter that will naturally be included when you give this book to a family member, neighbor, or friend. As you do, you may experience what Rob learned as a boy, and then again as a man: the gifts most likely to rekindle Christmas joy are not just the presents we give with our hands, but the gratitude we express from our hearts. Richard Thomas, Emmy Award–winning actor of stage, television, and motion pictures, first presented this story in the annual live Christmas concert of The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. As a young man, Mr. Thomas came to international acclaim portraying the eldest son in The Waltons, a television series about a large family struggling to support itself on a farm during the Great Depression. The Walton family was much like the family in “Christmas Day in the Morning,” and the character played by young Mr. Thomas was not unlike the boy Rob himself. As Mr. Thomas joined the Choir and Orchestra on stage, he entered a re-created farmhouse kitchen. In that setting, his warm, familiar presence reminded many of their past family Christmases. Audience members young and old were also reminded of their own childlike desires to be good, and to find their hearts bursting with Christmas joy .
About the Author: Pearl S. Buck wrote the short story “Christmas Day in the Morning” in 1955. She was a prolific author and earned a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth. The daughter of Christian missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in China. Upon her return to the United States in 1935, she became an advocate for women’s rights and racial equality.
David T. Warner received his PhD in theater and film from Brigham Young University and has worked with The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square for more than a decade.
Pages: 48
Deseret Book
