An ode to the rhythm and heft of everyday life.

There are many and varied stories, told in film and literature, that attempt to define the life-affirming significance of Christmas. There are archetypes pushed at us every December, from Scrooge to the George Bailey character in It's a Wonderful Life. But there have been few stories like the one in Alistair MacLeod's To Every Thing There Is A Season. In fact the only work that has as much resonance and plumbs the depths of the meaning of Christmas is also Canadian - Claude Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine, the 1971 movie about life in a small Quebec mining town in the late 1940s.

MacLeod's short story, also set in the '40s, begins on Halloween, when the first, fat snowflakes fall on Cape Breton. The next morning, winter has set in and the narrator, an 11-year-old boy, finds that his young brother, still excited by Halloween, wonders what costume he will wear for Christmas. He's told that there's no need to dress in costume and that Santa Claus will find him, if he's good. The narrator himself is on the cusp of growing up and is vaguely sad that he's left faith in Santa Claus behind.

As Christmas approaches, the reader is given brief but elegantly wrought vignettes of life on a Cape Breton farm in winter. The cattle are fed after holes have been broke in the ice to let them drink. The sheep huddle against the wintry air - "A conspiracy of wool against the cold." The clothes on the washing line freeze hard and sway, "like sections of dismantled robots."

Inside the family home there's warmth by the fire, and that's where the father, who "has not been well" sits constantly, coughing into a handkerchief. Everyone - the mother, the younger brother, the six-year-old twins and the two teenage girls of the family - are waiting for Christmas. But it's not Christmas day itself they yearn for. It's the return of the oldest son, Neil, who works on the boats on the Great Lakes. Neil, they know, will bring warmth, gifts and the vitality of his presence to Christmas. He is more important than Santa Claus, more powerful a force than winter itself.

When Neil arrives, after the Great Lakes boats have been made idle by the ice, the house is immediately transformed. Many boxes have preceded him by mail, filled with presents, but it's the warmth of his embrace and the emphatic strength of his physical presence that matter.

There's a trip to a country church on Christmas Eve in a horse-drawn sleigh. The children are bundled up, snuggled in hay and have heated stones at their feet. Later, at home, the parcels from Neil are opened and the intricate sailor's knots fall away to reveal packages that contain the ideal gifts. But that is not the point, nor indeed the climax of this deft Christmas story. What happens is that the father says something. And what he says, simple but profound, allows all the elements of the narrative to click into place, and the story's title to echo back to the reader: "Every man moves on, but there is no need to grieve. He leaves good things behind."

Alistair MacLeod, whose award-winning and best-selling novel No Great Mischief established him as a major Canadian writer, has here written a story for the ages. It is about Cape Breton, yes. And it is about Cape Breton in a deep and abiding way. It is about Canada too, and the shape and meaning of the country in winter. Still, at its core it is a story about the rhythm and heft of life itself.

This story, which began life as a Christmas tale for The Globe and Mail in 1977, was also published in MacLeod's story collection, Island, in 2000. Here, To Every Thing There Is A Season stands alone over 48 pages, accompanied by Peter Rankin's plain, evocative illustrations. It is flawlessly written; not a single word seems out of place. It is also meant to be both read and spoken. The story opens with, "I am speaking here of a time when I was eleven and lived with my family on our small farm on the west coast of Cape Breton." When MacLeod writes "I am speaking…," it is seemingly an invitation to read aloud. And indeed, his exceptional prose, simply written but vivid with colour and gentle humour, is both beguiling on the page and a pleasure to read aloud.

This little book contains only one story, but that story contains a world and evokes an entire way of life. It is a remarkably subtle tale; simple on the surface and in the end it is a tender rendering of the essence of life itself, not only of the spirit of Christmas.

To Every Thing There Is A Season, A Cape Breton Christmas Story, written by Alistair MacLeod and illustrated by Peter Rankin; McClelland & Stewart; 48 pages, $20. John Doyle is a writer whose first book, A Great Feast Of Light, a memoir, will be published by Doubleday in fall 2005.