“Lighthouses, Ronnie, are like a helping hand reaching out from Heaven itself. And the tending of them is good work–good.“

What a great Christmas story! I’m not sure why it is not more familiar and recommended as the Christmas story that it certainly is. Perhaps it needs a subtitle, A Christmas Story.

Eleven year old Ronnie and his Aunt Martha now live together on the edge of town, but before Ronnie came to live with his aunt, she and her late husband were the lighthouse keepers of Tern Rock Lighthouse. Now the current lighthouse keeper, Mr. Flagg, wants to make a pre-Christmas visit to his family, and he asks Martha Morse and Ronnie to substitute for him at the lighthouse, just for a couple of weeks until December 15th. Ronnie is eager to go on this lighthouse adventure as long as he can get back for Christmas and the festivities at school and at home that will be coming.

I expected this story to be about a storm or a wrecked ship or some other exciting event, but Ronnie’s stay at the lighthouse is much more about what doesn’t happen than what does. Ronnie learns some lessons about joy and contentment and keeping promises. Aunt Martha guides her nephew with wise words and a quiet “masterly inactivity” in which Ronnie comes to his own conclusions about the lighthouse, and forgiveness, and the meaning of Christmas. The lighthouse itself with its steady warning beacon plays a part in showing Ronnie and Aunt Martha what is really important about celebrating Christmas, and the story points gently and subtly to Jesus and the light that He provides in this world of darkness and sin. (It’s not didactic at all.)

I’m hoping to share this story with lots of families, during the Christmas season and after. By the way, I’m not the only one who sees its worthiness. The Light at Tern Rock was a Newbery Honor book in 1951. You could pair this story with any of these other lighthouse books:

• Lightship by Brian Floca
• Gracie the Lighthouse Cat by Ruth Brown
• Birdie’s Lighthouse by Deborah Hopkinson
• Abbie Against the Storm: The True Story of a Young Heroine and a Lighthouse by Marcia K. Vaughan
• Hello, Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall (Caldecott Award winning picture book)
• Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop
• Beacons of Light: Lighthouses by Gail Gibbons
• Three Boys and a Lighthouse by Nan Hayden Agle
• The Lighthouse Family (series) by Cynthia Rylant
• The Lighthouse Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner.
• A Light in the Storm: The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin by Karen Hesse