1. The author covers several features of how his family celebrated Christmas. How does he manage to achieve clarity? What pattern does he employ to unfold the story?

回答：

It is not an easy matter to manage clarity describing such a big event as Christmas. To achieve this the author uses the parallel pattern of “there are no such...any more” to tell the whole story,covering several aspects and features－traveling on the bobsled, cooking food in the kitchen, home-made Christmas, big dinner etc, of how his family celebrated Christmas many years ago in the 1910s. The author also employs time order to describe the whole event: from the departure, traveling on the country road, to the arrival: from cooking in the kitchen preparing for the meal to the prayer before it, and then dinner and activities after dinner. Through these ways the author gives us a very clearly organized article.

2. How does the author end the essay? In what way does the ending echo the beginning and how does it rise above the beginning?

回答：

The author ends the essay with the sound of bells again. In the beginning, bells are used to evoke the memory of Christmas celebration for most Americans and to introduce the special Christmas the authors family had celebrated. Their bells also reveal when and where the event took place. In the ending, after sharing with us all the activities on that day, the author again describes the sound of bells this time on their way back home, and by then they had done whatever they could to honor this holy occasion and appreciated better the meaning of Christmas.

3. Paul Engle does a good job in bridging the Christmas celebration of his family with the broader meaning of Christmas. Can you give a few examples and explain how the connections are made? (the barn. the fire, the food, etc.)

回答：

The author gives broader meaning of Christmas while he describes the Christmas celebration of his family: it is not only a time for Christmas celebration, but a time about love, home and tradition, a time to appreciate new life and express goodwill and gratefulness, which everybody should share and cherish. When describing the barn, he talks about the tangy odor in the barn full of the smell of life which could scour out a man's lungs and then naturally he leads to his mention of a barn as the place to begin Christmas, where the original event happened. When he describes the candles on the top of the Christmas tree, he stresses that “there were real candles burning with real flames”, which created the warm and primitive Christmas atmosphere and suggested the same atmosphere on that original cold night. No modern electrically lit tree could do that. As for gifts and food, the author describes where they were from and how they were made. Everything was handmade, He says, “this is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance”.

Examine Paragraph 23 and point out where the humor lies

回答：

The author is humorous when describing how the big family had their big Christmas dinner: facing so many, so various delicious food and in such an elevated Christmas mood, you have no other choices to make and you have to eat as much as possible, regarding it as an ordeal－the natural lot of men, suffering bravely and determinedly till they couldn’t eat any more.

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