Roy MacGregor's Valley Christmas

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Although Christmas manages to insinuate itself into every story in this
collection, the reader is in no danger of suffering an overdose of
merriment or mistletoe. A beguiling Rod Serlingesque subtexture stirs
ominously through most of Roy MacGregor’s 10 tales. The stories are
about a senior who, on Christmas Eve, overhears his children discussing
how to put him in a nursing home; a paraplegic ex–hockey star who now
cruises the Internet instead of centre ice; a young boy who becomes
fatally attracted to another child’s demonic swiss army knife; and a
frustrated environmentalist named Clarence, who, like his Hollywood
namesake, is a questionable guardian angel.

These stories are touching, funny, sometimes sentimental, and, more
often than not, slightly disturbing. MacGregor deliberately situates all
his stories in deep-snow country, where the ring of tire chains has
replaced sleigh bells as a seasonal mannerism. And he explores the
various paradoxical emotions that modern Canadians—both Christians and
secular—face during the highest holiday in the calendar. Many of his
characters yearn for an old-fashioned Christmas, often realizing that
the Christmas they seek never quite existed in reality, while others
wallow in seasonal sentimentality. For the most part, these are
Christmas stories with a bite; but they are also highly readable at any
time of the year.