The Christmas Kalends of Provence by Thomas A. Janvier

But the material element of the Great Supper is its least part. What entitles it to the augmenting adjective is its soul: that subtle essence of peace and amity for which the word Christmas is a synonym in all Christian lands. It is the rule of these family gatherings at Christmas time in Provence that all heartburnings and rancours, which may have sprung up during the year, then shall be cut down; and even if sometimes they quickly grow again, as no doubt they do now and then, it makes for happiness that they shall be thus banished from the peace-feast of the year.

Janetoun and one of her sisters-in-law were the only members of our party who had a hatchet to bury; and the burial was over so quickly -- being but an extra hug and an explosion of kisses -- that I should have known nothing about it but for the over-long tongue of Mise Fougueiroun: who, in a kindly way, is as thorough-going a gossip as ever lived. Of all things in the world to quarrel about, this quarrel had grown out of a spirited difference of opinion as to how the heel of a knitted stocking should be turned! But the matter had come to be quite of a seriousness, and all the family breathed freer when those resounding peace-kisses were given and received. Actually, as I happened to learn later, the reconciliation was pushed to such an extreme that each of them incontinently adopted the other's knitting creed -- with the curious result that they now are in a fair way to have a fresh quarrel for next Christmas out of the same matter on inverted lines! It was before the lighting of the yule-log that the feud of the stocking heels thus happily (even though only temporarily) was pacified, and the family festival was cloudless from first to last.