Holiday Horsiness: A Pony for the Winter

The holidays are here! Thanksgiving is this Thursday and Christmas is only a few weeks after that. I thought it would be fun to look at how horses are included in our holiday celebrations.

I'm going to start with an old favorite, the book  A Pony for the Winter. It's not really a Christmas book, but it takes place during the winter months. My original copy is long gone. I found this one in a pile of giveaway books at school. It's yellowed with age but other than that, the book is in great shape.

I was seven when I first read A Pony for the Winter. I had my glass horses, read everything about horses that I could, and had been pestering my parents for my own horse, insisting that the back yard was big enough. (That phrase has followed me through my life to this day - I must really have been insistent!)

The story of a girl like me, Deborah longs for her own horse. When ponies appear down the road from her home, she visits them and discovers that they are summer carnival ponies and need homes for the winter.

Her parents agree to let her have one of them and after soon Mollie, a small black pony, arrives.

Initially, everyone in the family as well as some friends help Deborah clean Mollie's stall, feed and water her, and even ride her. 

When I was twelve and got Amy, I remembered this page - could I ever relate! I used to lug buckets of water down the moraine to the paddock during the winter when the hoses froze. More than once I went to school in wet jeans from all that water sloshing out of the buckets.

A view from the top of the moraine.

Deborah finds that having a pony is worth every bit of work that they are. Eventually her family and friends get tired of helping, and soon Deborah is the only one caring for Mollie. I can still quote one of my favorite lines verbatim: "Ponies are a lot of work, but you're worth it!"

I used to look at this picture and just wish, wish, wish I had a horse! 

After a long winter full of the ups and downs of having a pony, spring rolls around and it is time to give Mollie back to the carnival. Deborah is sad to lose her pony, but then she is asked by the carnival operator to take Mollie again when summer is over. The book ends on a high note with Deborah happily looking forward to having Mollie back in a few short months.

Stay 'tooned for more holiday horsiness!