For someone who has read Cold Comfort Farm, I was so excited to find this book, however I was disappointed to discover the title is misleading. Instead of being further adventures from Cold Comfort Farm, it is actually a compilation of short stories by Stella Gibbons and Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is only one of them. And to add further disappointment, only one or two of them even remotely mentions Christmas. Fool me once, and all that ……
In any case, for a book of short stories they were quite interesting, even if they were mostly missing the Christmas theme.
The Little Christmas Tree
Thirty-three year old Miss Rhoda Harting is a single spinster who makes her living as a writer. Retiring to a cottage in Buckinghamshire one Christmas season she finds herself lonely, a stark contrast to her usually reclusive yet positive character. On Christmas Day she encounters three children at her door who are attracted by her tiny Christmas tree in the window of her cottage. After lunch and a wild story, the arrival of their father sets up a question: is Rhoda destined to live life as a spinster or will love rearrange her carefully ordered life?