"On Christmas day. People give each other gifts. Celebrate the little Christ baby and the bloody wise men and somethin' about being born in a stable..."
Sharpe was not the best one to ask about the Christmas story -- he'd only just barely learned its intimate details later in life. Anyway, what was the big deal about being born in a stable? Richard Sharpe was born in a gutter, and no one gave him a day to himself. The Major didn't even know his own birthday, although it must have been recent. He could dimly recall his mother calling him a June or July child, but that was the only memory he had of her before she'd died and he'd been consigned to a childhood of picking hemp and oakum. Of beatings and of being thumped on the head with heavy Bibles. Always reminded: be sure your sin will find you out.
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Sharpe was not the best one to ask about the Christmas story -- he'd only just barely learned its intimate details later in life. Anyway, what was the big deal about being born in a stable? Richard Sharpe was born in a gutter, and no one gave him a day to himself. The Major didn't even know his own birthday, although it must have been recent. He could dimly recall his mother calling him a June or July child, but that was the only memory he had of her before she'd died and he'd been consigned to a childhood of picking hemp and oakum. Of beatings and of being thumped on the head with heavy Bibles. Always reminded: be sure your sin will find you out.