A Highland Christmas

Police Constable Hamish Macbeth was fighting his own Christmas blues. It was the week before Christmas and bitter cold weather held the countryside in its iron grip around the Highlands of Scotland and the village of Lochdubh. He missed his family, who were vacationing in Florida. Hamish's family were unusual in the Highlands because they had always celebrated Christmas with a turkey, tree, lights, and presents. In many parts of the Highlands the old spirit of John Knox still lingered, blasting anyone with the threat of hellfire for even thinking of celebrating this heathen festival. For as every good Calvinist knew, Christmas was an old Roman festival.

It was work as usual for Hamish, who had the entire Christmas shift. One of the more irritating complaints came from the cranky Mrs. Gallagher. This time her cat had gone missing. A neighboring town, a bit less rigid about the holiday, reported missing Christmas lights. For the first time, the village council had voted to put up lights along main street. Now they had been stolen from the community center along with a missing tree.

Fortunately, there's no assault or murder cases, but Hamish thinks it's a real crime not to celebrate Christmas. As he makes a little girl's dream come true, finds a way to light the neighboring village, and soothes a lonely woman's fears, Hamish gets a very special present of his own (of the canine variety) and has the best Christmas ever. All in a week's work.

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Title of ebook: A Highland Christmas
ISBN: 9780446920551
parent-ISBN: 9780892966998
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 03-2001
Released online for download: 08-23-2002
Author of eBook: Beaton, M. C.

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A Highland Christmas

Chapter One

More and more people each year are going abroad for Christmas. To celebrate the season of goodwill towards men, British Airways slams an extra one hundred and four pounds on each air ticket. But the airports are still jammed.

For so many people are fleeing Christmas.

Fed up with the fact that commercial Christmas starts in October. Fed up with carols. Dreading the arrival of Christmas cards from people they have forgotten to send a card to. Unable to bear yet another family get-together with Auntie Mary puking up in the corner after sampling too much of the punch. You see at the airports the triumphant glitter in the eyes of people who are leaving it all behind, including the hundredth rerun of Miracle on 34th Street.

But in Lochdubh, in Sutherland, in the very far north of Scotland, there is nothing to flee from. Christmas, thought Hamish Macbeth gloomily, as he walked along the waterfront, his shoulders hunched against a tearing wind, was not coming to Lochdubh this year any more than it had come the previous years.

There was a strong Calvinist element in Lochdubh which frown ... read full excerpt from: A Highland Christmas ebook

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A Highland Christmas

Chapter One

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