Nostalgia has a bad reputation in this uber-ironic era of ours. And no wonder: some Internet sleuthing quickly shows that contemporary nostalgia clings, sticky as plaque on teeth, to objects. There are brisk sales of nostalgic drag-racing cars, nostalgic board games, even nostalgically obsolete computers.

In my dictionary, however, nostalgia is defined as “the ache for home,” something quite different from a sentimental mooning over used consumer goods that jog our memories. Christmas, surely, is a time when both adults and children may be permitted to linger over affectionate memories of family love, jokes, and merriment – albeit with a note of warning that nostalgia is a perilous state of mind, slipping all too easily into retrospective falsehood.

In Aunt Olga’s Christmas Postcards, Kevin Major, the noted Newfoundland author of 10 novels for the young and winner of the 1992 Vicky Metcalf Award for a body of work, handles the necessary balancing act with airy skill. Major owns a collection of antique Christmas postcards that furnish the book with its cover, its endpapers, and most of its illustrations. It’s hard not to notice that the story, too, is jerry-built around the cards. And yet it works beautifully, especially for ages six and up, partly because the cards themselves are so charming, and partly because the narrative, both humorous and tender, is based on a strong relationship between a witty old woman and her fiercely loyal great-great-niece.

Anna, the little girl, is eager to visit her 95-year-old Aunt Olga before Christmas, as she does every year. She looks forward to helping her ice the gingerbread cookies and browse through her collection of antique Christmas postcards. Anna staunchly brushes aside her parents’ offer to cancel the visit this year because “things are just not the same” (a hint at Olga’s declining health).

Their visit is evoked almost completely in affectionate dialogue. Aunt Olga and Anna chat and banter and vie with each other to make up Christmas card poems, as Anna tactfully steers her aging aunt away from sudden moments of sadness or foreboding. Aunt Olga’s reminiscences link to the antique scenes on the cards that frame the text on each page. When Olga remembers how she loved to “dance on ice,” the surrounding cards show rosy-cheeked children swooping and spinning on frozen streams. The cards, with their deep-toned greens and reds, cast a glow of irresistible festivity over the text.

Here’s where the deft touch of Major and the inspired work of illustrator Bruce Roberts save the whole venture from slipping into cheap manipulation. Roberts’ lively drawings of pen, ink, and watercolour (reminiscent of Quentin Blake’s) show us Olga and Anna in quick, squiggly lines that skip with good humour, energy, and optimism – a brilliant and easily grasped visual contrast with the more static, formal postcards. And Major never lets his characters sentimentalize the sweet antique scenes they’re admiring. Au contraire: Olga wryly recalls how she was employed as a Christmas verse-writer and longed to write humorous poems but was forced to compose “sugary rhymes.” To further remind readers that the cards represent an unreal world, Olga and Anna laughingly pretend that the cards are real photographs of the younger Olga as a maiden or adorable angel child (wearing itchy artificial wings). Their joking sets up a nice ironic counterpoint to the prettiness of the cards, with their unfailing joy, honeyed lamplight, and chuckling gnomes.

Children as well as adults may be drawn to pore over the lost world depicted in the postcards, their distinctive artistic styles instantly evoking different decades. An added sombre note: several of the cards show soldiers at the front in the First World War, with the simple caption “1916.”

The time is the Second World War in One Splendid Tree by Ontario author Marilyn Helmer, illustrated by graphic designer Dianne Eastman. Hattie, her younger brother, Junior, and their mother have been forced to move to a shabby little apartment building while their father is fighting overseas. The children are facing a pinched and gloomy Christmas when the irrepressible Junior finds a discarded houseplant in the hallway and decides to decorate it as a Christmas tree.

The practical Hattie is reluctant until she, too, gets caught up in the adventure of making paper chains and foil stars. Soon all the tenants in the building are contributing their simple ornaments. The tree is moved to the lobby, where the tenants stage a spontaneous party to greet the holiday. The crowning glory is a golden angel sent by their father to top the tree.

The story is simple and satisfying, but it’s probably the photocollage illustrations that will lure adult purchasers. Every page of text faces a full-page, white-bordered evocation of 1940s Canada. Not a detail is wrong – the drab streetscape, the children’s sturdy clothes (tweed coat with rabbit-fur trim and matching leggings for Hattie, a leatherette bomber jacket for Junior), the Spitfire lunchboxes, the old neighbour’s suspenders, the fussy floral decal on the cookie tin are all spot-on. The sheer attention to visual detail makes this a nostalgia-lover’s delight; younger readers, too, may be fascinated by the palpable difference in the look of everyday objects and street scenes.

Only the children’s round-eyed innocence seems a little strange; these are computer illustrations, and the flat light and shadowless facial expressions put a slight anachronistic chill on the warm 1940s family scenes.

Both these picture books for older children should find a generous welcome. Both hearken back to earlier times to remind readers of what endures and is most memorable about seasonal celebration – family ties, kindness, and creative ingenuity. Major’s book encourages children to write their own Christmas poems; Helmer provides instructions for making an old-fashioned woollen snowman ornament.