With the softening snows of December setting the scene for the most magical festival of the year and the hills and dales of the countryside calmly sleeping under winter's thick pure mantle, then is the time that Christmas comes to the farm. For rural children, luckier than most to be born on a modern farm, there is the best of two worlds. For them there is both the excitement of electric-powered model racetracks and rocketships under the sparkle-lit tree in the farmhouse living room, and also the timeless ingredients (fondsly remembered by older city slickers either in fact or fancy) which used to make up the real old-fashioned type of Christmas. For down on this farm a vigorous boy or girl has a wide choice of things to do. Setting aside the new technological toys until evening, the wide spaces of the farmyard and the vistas of smooth, white fields beckon youngsters to more active fun. There are horses to ride through the wind-smoothed drifts, snow to be shovelled from the roofs, and pigs to be chased in the yard. There are cows to be attended in the barns, pets to be cared for and firelogs to be sawn and gathered from the solitude of the hillside woodlot. With guests arriving for the big family Christmas dinner, there is the sleigh to be rigged and the horse to be hitched up from the distant country road - with the usurped purring automobiles following at a discreet respectful distance. For Canadian children living on a farm, celebrating Christmas remains a colorful event to spice the memory for a lifetime ahead despite a rapidly developing and changing world.