As I wrote in a previous post, I feel like I'm reading this book for the first time. There are many details that I must have vaulted over in the past 8 years. Now that I'm reading these 6 pages each morning: there is much that appears new to me. Of course, I wouldn't have forgotten Cather's moment of scrap-booking that showed up today (Jim making a Christmas gift for Ántonia's sister Yulka) the description of which could make Martha Stewart smile. This particular section has the two families sharing parts of their culture with each other as a way of expressing thanks in the best way they know how. Some gifts are welcome, others such as the dried Bohemian mushrooms, don't make it past suspicious noses. The Christmas tree becomes a meeting point of the cultures represented: popcorn strung, gingerbread figures, Otto's treasured paper cutouts sent each year by his mother back in Austria. Mr. Shimerda's intense Catholic reaction when the tree was suddenly lit and Grandfather Burden's Protestant gesture of acceptance. Cather painted a picture of shared and colliding cultures, that could have taken more words to say.