The Light of Hope
Featherstone, Vaughn J. 1979. The Light of Hope. Deseret Book Company.
Rating:
1
Review:
Mostly stories by and about other people.
This isn’t really a book but rather a very small pamphlet (12 pages total) with some thoughts about the Christmas season. The bulk of the pamphlet is made up of stories, including the now famous Mormon Christmas story of Thomas S. Monson’s concern for the widows in the ward in which he was bishop so many years ago. Along with the stories are numerous quotes and poems, resulting in Vaughn J. Featherstone having written perhaps 4 or 5 pages of the total pamphlet.
The message is obviously that Christmas is more than just giving presents, but he never actually gets around to what the actual message of Christmas is; or at least what he thinks it is. Interestingly he calls the ‘world’s’ (meaning everyone that isn’t Mormon) celebration of Christmas ‘pagan’. If Mr. Featherstone had taken the time to consider what he was writing, he may have reconsidered that statement. He is probably referring to the giving of gifts and Santa Claus. Most Mormons give gifts and many have Santa Claus deliver them. He even recounts one story where a family has lost their father and they miss the fact that he used to dress up like Santa Claus on Christmas morning to deliver the gifts. If celebrating Christmas by giving gifts and having Santa Claus deliver them is ‘pagan’, then Mormons are pagans. Perhaps the only group I know of that isn’t pagan using this defintion, would be many of the Catholics I met in Costa Rica who attribute the giving of gifts to the Baby Jesus instead of Santa Claus.
Anyway, the pamphlet could use a better editor – there are several spelling and grammatical mistakes – and suffers from a real lack of fluency and clarity. I’m not surprised that it is out of print. You’d be better off just reading the Nativity story from the Bible or some other story than this rather incoherent pamphlet.