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A review by wouterk
Death of a Christmas Tree Salesman: A Sam Shovel Mystery by Patricia Meredith
4.0
What a delicious, wonderful, scrumptuous story. As we follow snowman Sam Shovel in sloving the murder of the Christmas Tree Salesman we get a deep dive into all kinds of christmas traditions. We meet many wonderful figures from the lore surrounding the christmas days from many different cultures. And we are swept away with an avalanche of Christmas puns and references to christmas movies and songs.
It's an easy cosy read that evokes many of the warm feelings of christmas, while at the same time providing you with a fun puzzle, that can be solved before the reveal. And it's so humorous, I kept giggling and laughing.
Now I still have to playfully address a few minor historical inaccuracies (one minor, one bigger). To be clear, I highly respect the amount of research Meredith has clearly done for such a short novel, so no gripes here at all. Furthermore, what I'm addressing does not detract from the story at all, but well, something about feeling the compulsive duty to always correct misinformation for whoever is interested.
First, the minor thing I have to correct, being a Dutch person myself, is that at no point do we set out the 'pepernoten' for 'Sinterklaas'. His Piets and himself give them to the children (at a series of occasions really). We just provide fruit or vegetables and some water for his horse.
Second, more cultural appropriationately (read with playful smirk tone), like many contemporary media this book positions Christmas and santa as being an American thing that then spread around the world, so there had to be all kinds of local helper santa's to be hired. And it is a common story beat. Brilliant Americans create a commercial success and the rest of the world adores it. However, let's be fair. It is the other way around.
The US is a country founded by Europeans. Historical evidence points in the direction that Sinterklaas as a figure was explicitly imported to the US and the his characteristics were mixed with the British Father Christmas. Then the elves were added from Scandinavian folklore and Mrs. Claus was added locally (at least that's what my small deep dive brought up). It's not American export, it's import from Europe, where many of these traditions existed before the US existed. Anyway, it by no means affects the story, which is wonderful. And I believe Meredith is clearly aware of connections but als seperateness between all these traditions, so it is probably as much a device to make the story work than meant as historically accurate. Still let's not pretend that the US is the center of the universe in everything.
With that historical rant being over. Do read this book. It is so much fun!
It's an easy cosy read that evokes many of the warm feelings of christmas, while at the same time providing you with a fun puzzle, that can be solved before the reveal. And it's so humorous, I kept giggling and laughing.
Now I still have to playfully address a few minor historical inaccuracies (one minor, one bigger). To be clear, I highly respect the amount of research Meredith has clearly done for such a short novel, so no gripes here at all. Furthermore, what I'm addressing does not detract from the story at all, but well, something about feeling the compulsive duty to always correct misinformation for whoever is interested.
First, the minor thing I have to correct, being a Dutch person myself, is that at no point do we set out the 'pepernoten' for 'Sinterklaas'. His Piets and himself give them to the children (at a series of occasions really). We just provide fruit or vegetables and some water for his horse.
Second, more cultural appropriationately (read with playful smirk tone), like many contemporary media this book positions Christmas and santa as being an American thing that then spread around the world, so there had to be all kinds of local helper santa's to be hired. And it is a common story beat. Brilliant Americans create a commercial success and the rest of the world adores it. However, let's be fair. It is the other way around.
The US is a country founded by Europeans. Historical evidence points in the direction that Sinterklaas as a figure was explicitly imported to the US and the his characteristics were mixed with the British Father Christmas. Then the elves were added from Scandinavian folklore and Mrs. Claus was added locally (at least that's what my small deep dive brought up). It's not American export, it's import from Europe, where many of these traditions existed before the US existed. Anyway, it by no means affects the story, which is wonderful. And I believe Meredith is clearly aware of connections but als seperateness between all these traditions, so it is probably as much a device to make the story work than meant as historically accurate. Still let's not pretend that the US is the center of the universe in everything.
With that historical rant being over. Do read this book. It is so much fun!