I went to the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square concert where this was performed that year and Richard Thomas read it. It was such a powerful concert, I can still feel the sentiment and emotion from it. (And it was fun to see "John Boy" again. Growing up, my family never missed The Waltons back in the day!)
Christmas Day in the Morning is one story our family reads every year and I'm so glad to have this book now, with the beautiful illustrations (and music lyrics) in it. I didn't realize that in the original story, it was a man looking back on his most memorable Christmas. Once he's looked back on that memory of his boyhood, he writes his wife a letter of love and gratitude. There is also room in this book for the reader to write a letter of gratitude of your own and gift it to someone else. Such a great personalized gift to give!
You can get your copy here
Here's the back copy:
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 motions 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.
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