Christmas Gift!

This charming account of the celebration of Christmas in a Fayette County, Georgia, family is re-created with joy and appreciation of the quirks among the author's extended family. Sams, a novelist ( Run with the Horseman ) who is a practicing physician, captures the essence of storied Southern hospitality in a melange of vignettes recalling Christmases observed in years that were lean as well as bountiful. With acceptable hyperbole (``Our daddy was imbued with every masculine virtue that has ever been delineated''), and benign oversight of the perplexities of Southern society prior to World War II, Sams takes the reader into the comfortable ``Big House'' on Christmas Day, filled with aunts, uncles and wide-eyed chidren who, in the continuity of their traditions, give meaning to the word ``family.'' (Oct.)