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The Cities Blog
Laura McCallum

A Christmas reading tradition

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Most years around this time, I open up my Villager newspaper (formerly the Highland Villager) and find myself absorbed in the latest holiday story by St. Paul author Roger Barr. For nearly 15 years, he's been writing short stories on the saga of the Bartholomew family and their life-sized nativity scene. It's a busy time of year, and there's never enough time to read, but these stories have always been a nice respite from the holiday craziness for me, and a reminder of what this season is truly all about.

Now, Barr has compiled his 13 stories in a book, Getting Ready for Christmas... & Other Stories. All of the proceeds go to benefit emergency food shelves, which is a recurring theme in many of his short stories. As you've probably heard in Julie Siple's excellent hunger reporting, more Minnesotans are using food shelves in these tight economic times. Kudos to Barr for using his talents to try to help those less fortunate this time of year.