Maggie Rose, Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer

It was with a contented sigh and tear-stained cheeks that I finished our Christmas read-aloud Wednesday morning. Maggie Rose, Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer is truly about as perfect as a story can be.  It’s a short novel, only eleven chapters.  It’s the story of Maggie Rose Bunker, one of “those Bunkers,” a large family of friendly, incorrigible riff-raff that lives on the Maine coast.  Maggie Rose is different, though–she knows her family’s not quality, like the summer people who populate the shore houses, or even like Miss Myra Moon, her teacher and confidante.  However, even though she knows her family’s different, she loves them and even both accommodates and fills in the gaps for their inadequacies.  Maggie Rose is special, just like her Christmas Eve birthday.  This year, the year of her ninth birthday, she has decided to have her own birthday celebration.  She spends all summer raising money by picking berries to sell, and she collects as many friends as she does pails of berries.  About three chapters from the end of the story the unthinkable happens, but the resolution is just as wonderful as it can be.  (This whole climax-denouement situation presented my girls and me with a powerful opportunity to discuss these literary elements in a very casual and natural way.  Score! 🙂 )

I couldn’t help but compare this story in my mind to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and Maggie Rose to the Herdmans.  The whole idea of classes and “those ________” (Bunkers or Herdmans) and how they are treated by their neighbors is somewhat similar, but Maggie Rose is in a class by herself.  She is both winsome and smart, and I found the story sweet and poignant but not saccharine.  Here are a few snippets that show Maggie Rose’s character:

Friday afternoons were library days and rarely did Maggie Rose miss one.  Here was time and place for discovery and satisfaction.  Every shelf held such a load of expectation and promise that at times she was well-nigh staggered by it.  She devoured books as a hungry robin gulps down angleworms.  They fed her and she came back always hungry for more.  (48)

Sunday came–the first in July.  To Maggie Rose, Sunday was a special day.  Long ago she had heard one of the Chapel preachers read:  “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. . . And the Lord blessed the sabbath and sactified it.”  Maggie Rose stowed away so many sayings from the Holy Book; she was thrifty and thorough about it as a chipmunk stowing away the seeds of a spruce cone.  Words and sentences stayed with her–to use again, or just to make happy remembering.  (72)

The end of this short novel is beautiful.  It’s about family and community and being able to give instead of always receiving.  It represents the true meaning of Christmas as well as any story I’ve read.  I love this book and give it a Highly, Highly Recommended.  (Harper & Row, 1952)

Other Christmas chapter books we’ve read:

• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
• The Family Under the Bridge by Nancy Savage Carlson
• The Light at Tern Rock by Julia L. Sauer
• The Thirteen Days of Christmas by Jenny Overton
• The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L’Engle