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       Dear Reader

      My memories of Christmas are many and varied, but within the most precious is the continuing theme of love, of commitment to family, of faith and hope for the future. For without the true spirit of Christmas within our hearts we can have little faith in ourselves or those who surround us.

      During this season of the year we find ourselves more willing to forgive, more considerate of others, able to give more freely of ourselves and our resources. Certainly that unselfishness is but one result of the blessedness of the birth we celebrate. Christmas is a time for family, both related by blood and unrelated except by compassion, for we can find ourselves just as caught up in love and caring with strangers as with our own.

      May each of you, my readers, seek out some way during this most holy of seasons to find ways of expressing your love for all mankind. May your holiday be happy and your heart be made joyful.

       Carolyn

       My story, A CHRISTMAS CHILD, is dedicated with love to a babe born during the years of my youth, my niece, Marianne. She has grown to be a woman of perception, a concerned, caring mother and a dear friend. To her I offer this story with all my love.

       Prologue

      The room held the fetid odor of death, and the babe who sounded his first wail in that hot, stale air waved thin arms and legs in a frantic motion, as though he sensed that his cries might be futile, that his future might be as dark as his past. For the woman who had given birth had already breathed her last. Her only contribution to the future lay in the doctor’s hands, and already he was eager to leave this chamber of death for the clean, pure air he might find out of doors.

      The sun was setting, the sky ablaze with color, and such beauty of nature seemed almost unholy compared to the pall of death that hung low over the small clearing. The small cabin and outbuildings represented the life’s work and dreams of Joe and Charlotte Winters, both of whom lay abed in the cabin, their souls no longer of this world, their hearts no longer beating, only a small, scrawny infant boy child left to wail his sadness aloud.

      The country doctor made haste to wrap the boy in a flannel rag, and carried him into the chill air of the December evening, rushing to the house that lay just over a small hill to the west, a place where the child might find warmth and nourishment, for he was small and weak and his chance of survival seemed slim.

      The door of the farmhouse opened wide; a plump lady peered out and greeted the doctor with an uplifted arm. “Come in. Come in. Bring that child inside where it’s warm and let me find a blanket for him.”

      “It’s best if I drop this flannel rag outside,” the kindly doctor said sadly. “It’s no doubt full of germs. Needs to be burned.”

      “It’ll wait till morning,” Mrs. Baker said quietly. “It’s below freezing out there and the germs won’t live long in the cold.”

      “Typhoid seems to be a hard thing to kill,” the doctor told her. “But maybe we can get this little mite washed up and into clean clothes and keep him alive. His mama’s last words were that he be cared for.”

      “Charlotte was a good woman,” her neighbor said, tears running down her cheeks as she took the wide-eyed infant in her arms. “I’ve got hot water in the reservoir and lots of soap and washcloths. Reckon I haven’t forgotten how to wash a newborn.”

      In but a few moments the tiny babe was covered with soap from head to toe, each particle of his body cleansed and rinsed in clear water. The woman who held him to her breast shed tears of sorrow as she worked, her mind on the future of the babe she held. It seemed that

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