As we begin to embrace both the sorrow of the Newtown
massacre and the joy of Christmas, it is good to return to the classic holiday
stories. My class of five and I sat around our fireplace yesterday morning,
rain falling outside, our meeting room festooned with a tree, two mangers and several
bright red Santa Clauses carved out of walnut. The wind bustled, slap dashing
against the windows as we read Nabakov, Dickens, Truman Capote, and Russell
Banks. And listened to Dylan Thomas reading A
Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Our spirits came together as we heard Truman Capote in A Christmas Memory tell the story of his
Christmas as a young boy in Monroeville Alabama, living with relatives in a big
house. His close friend and constant companion, a sixty-year-old female
relative, looked like “a bantam rooster.” At Christmas, they gathered their
pennies (they are quite poor) and made thirty fruit cakes, distributing them to
“people who have struck their fantasy” like President Roosevelt, the local bus
driver and Haha Jones who supplied them with whiskey for the cakes. Buddy’s
companion is full of wisdom. She reflects, “there’s never two of anything.” And,
toward the end of the story, she says,
“I’ve always thought that a body would have to be sick and dying before
they saw the Lord….But I’ll wager that at the very end a body realizes that the
Lord has already shown himself. That things as they are – her hand circles in a
gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over
her bone—just what they’ve always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could
leave the world with today in my eyes.” Words like this calm our spirit and
heal us. Read Capote’s story aloud to your family and friends, and smile.
And then, revisit A
Christmas Carol and remember the transformation of Scrooge once he was
visited by the spirits. After his encounters with the ghosts,
“He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total
Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he
knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the
knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as
Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”
If you have another moment, listen to A
Child’s Christmas in Wales, read by Dylan Thomas. This tale will make you
laugh and you will marvel at the music of the language. Listening together with
friends and family will bring you close.
Happy Holidays and let’s keep the radiance of today in our
eyes and rejoice in our loved ones.
