A Christmas Wish

Written By: Stuart Ferguson | Issue: December 2024

Stuart Ferguson is a local historian, armchair traveler, and irrepressible raconteur. He reviews books for The Highland Hiker, which maintains an extensive collection of local literature.

Written and illustrated by Corydon Bell, the short (36 pages) and truly sweet Come Snow Fer Christmas was published in 1947 but is set in Old Sapphire on a snowy December 24th, sometime before automobiles. It’s a handsomely designed little volume.

The story opens with Dr. Cliff Beddingfield (“Doc”) composing the annual Christmas letter to his wife, Cora – who died 10 years earlier. It’s the only way he can cope with grief, always strongest this time of the year. From Charleston, genteel Cora had loved all the celebrations of the season, while Doc, who grew up right where he now lives, experienced a more subdued day:

“Christmas in the mountains was not the strenuously festive time enjoyed by outlanders. Each family celebrated the day according to its inclination and ability—the latter often painfully small.”

This year, Doc is having trouble writing his annual missive; maybe he should check on his elderly neighbors in the meantime? A horseback ride through “the sting of driving snow” brings him to the Lears. They’re hale and hearty but tell Doc that the new family over the ridge lost their farmhouse in a fire just that morning and sullenly refused Mr. Lear’s help afterwards.

Doc won’t accept that earlier “no” and rides to the burnt-out ruins. Pushing past angry and distraught young Bob Cable, Doc finds Cable’s wife Madge shivering in the corn crib (which survived the fire) – and very pregnant. Perhaps you can spot the analogy; I’m not giving anything away when I tell you there’s a happy, moving, resolution to this simple tale.

Corydon and his perhaps-yet-more-talented wife Thelma Harrington Bell (kids’ books and botanical illustrations) moved to Rainy Knob from Cleveland in 1944. The land was in fact owned by Thelma’s sisters Winnie and Millie, who lived in the c. 1892 farmhouse but let the Bells construct a small guesthouse close by, according to Beth Townsend, who generously filled me in on the property’s history. Ms. Townsend’s family acquired the farm in 1977; Beth now lives there and honors the talented couple by preserving their home and art.

The “About the Author” note in Come Snow Fer Christmas boasts that Corydon is “known also as a good musician and skillful carpenter” and that “no such ingenious and well-made door latches and slick cupboards as are in the Bells’ studio cabin” are to be found in any other in the Carolina mountains!

Alas, Snow Fer Christmas isn’t available through any local libraries, but you’ll find old copies available via the Internet, starting at around $6; the compact little tome would make a thoughtful stocking stuffer for the right friend.