A Christmas memory and nostalgia of holidays past
The second lesson from A Christmas Memory is that this is a season for sharing.
“This is our last Christmas together. Life separates us. Those who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go,” so writes Truman Capote in A Christmas Memory.
As we gear up for the holiday season, Capote’s A Christmas Memory is a timeless and heartwarming tale that captures the longing for an ideal Christmas — an audacious gambit like a dream that becomes impossible to resist — anticipated, imagined and remembered. The Christmas season, as Capote writes, is a nostalgic time, a search for a mourned, irrecoverable time, a season for a wistful longing for the memories of Christmases past and the magic of tiny moments.
A last Christmas with a loved one like in A Christmas Memory, is even more heartbreaking. It reminded me of the last Christmas before my father died. Unlike Capote’s narrator, I didn’t know it was our last Christmas together. However, my father had started, years earlier, dropping subtle hints that his time was up. When he first broached the subject on a distant sunny afternoon, we were walking through the countryside as if we were wading through a tidal river in bursts of warm and cold.
He was taller than me, so I think whenever I glanced over his head, it was against a backdrop of the blue sky. The sunlight seemed to have a quality of powdered gold — rays spilling onto the ground underfoot and arching overhead like a rainbow in intricate patterns and colourful yarns. Birds gathered nearby — with a crescendo of birdcall in twittering chatter — swooping down and flying to do whatever it is that birds do.
Taita proverbs
After that day, my father packed more and more Taita proverbs in what he said. His words were windows into his world, but he somehow kept the doors locked. When he died, it felt like he took the keys with him. My mother still keeps his knife, a fading memento of loss, now small with sharpening over time. I often wonder what it is that my father dreamt about outside the village he spent most his life in. This is the part that reminds me most of Capote’s A Christmas Memory — the dreaming for a life beyond village life.
Published in 1956, A Christmas Memory is an autobiographical tale through the eyes of a young boy and his elderly cousin as they prepare for Christmas in rural Alabama, USA, during the Great Depression so it was a time of poverty. Much of rural Kenya is reeling from poverty so there are some major similarities with the setting of the story.
The narrator is an unnamed seven-year-old boy who develops a close relationship with his much older cousin, Miss Sook Faulk. Even though the age difference is stark, the two shared a great love for the magic of Christmas. There are several lessons from A Christmas Memory for Kenyans during this season. One of them is the importance of spending time together with loved ones.
Whether it involves travelling to rural areas or family members visiting towns, what matters is spending time together. This time spent with loved ones is priceless and is good for bonding and creating memories, memories we could need in future. Like the way I now cherish the memories of my father who is long gone. I cannot now remember the voice of his laughter, no matter how hard I try... Oh, my father, my father!
The second lesson from A Christmas Memory is that this is a season for sharing. As a critic writes about the story, “Another symbol that Capote employs is the fruitcakes. Miss Sook, with her unwavering dedication, bakes numerous fruitcakes every year to send as gifts to acquaintances and distant relatives. The fruitcakes represent the spirit of giving and the importance of human connection.
Express affection
Despite their limited means, the young narrator and Miss Sook pour their love and care into each fruitcake, using it as a means to express their affection and bring joy to others”. One doesn’t have to have much to be able to share with others. The young boy and his elderly cousin didn’t have much, but they shared the little they had with others. That is the true spirit of Christmas.
The third lesson is that the Christmas season is not only a time for adventure but also a time to nurture dreams. The young narrator and his elderly cousin spent time having fun by making kites out of old newspapers and strings. These kites, “symbolise their longing for freedom and escape from their mundane lives. As they fly the kites in the open fields, they experience a temporary release from their daily struggles, finding solace in the simplicity of their shared joy”.
As Kenyans wind down 2024, a year that has been challenging in many aspects, may this Christmas season bring joy to all. “Peace on earth, goodwill to men,” announced the angel during the first Christmas according to the biblical account. May that be true for all of us.
The writer is a book publisher based in Nairobi. [email protected]
