A Christmas Memory
We all have Christmas traditions, but the dedication the two main characters of this story put into their tradition of baking 30 fruitcakes is tooth-rattlingly sweet!
The Facts Text: A Christmas Memory Author: Truman Capote
Genre: Christmas story, Southern gothic Year: 1956
Available: Free Here
The Fiction
This week we move away from a story about a specific Christmas dream to a story about a specific Christmas memory. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote is a story that is equally heartwarming and heart wrenching. Told from the perspective of a little boy we only know as "Buddy" the story details Buddy's relationship with his best friend, an older cousin of his in her sixties. The two live together on a farm with many relatives and are very close. Buddy being a child and his friend having an unspecified disorder that makes her very childlike the two are often left to their own devices by the rest of the family.
The two are an odd but very charming pair. The story starts one November morning with Buddy's friend proclaiming it it fruitcake weather. We follow the adventure of the two performing their annual tradition of baking thirty fruit cakes for Christmas. We learn how they save and hide money through out the year for this day, see them buy and collect ingredients, including illegal whiskey, and eventually bake and send out their cakes.
We follow them through some other Christmas traditions such as decorating, finding a beautiful tree to cut themselves, and making presents for each other. Throughout their adventures together they are accompanied by their loyal family dog Queenie. The relationship between Buddy and the older woman he only refers to as his best friend or friend is the center of this story. Both of them, having spent all their savings on fruitcake ingredients have no money to buy the other presents and end up building each other kites for Christmas. Their Christmas holiday ends with the two of them flying their kites together.
Buddy as narrator reflects that this was their last Christmas together. He was sent away to military school the following year and was unable to return home for the following years. Meanwhile he writes that's his friend's health was slowly declining with her spending more and more days in bed, and eventually not getting up on the special November morning when fruitcakes demand to be baked. It is when he hears this that Buddy knows, and the letters he receives from his family shortly after only confirms what he has already felt was coming. After his friend dies Buddy looks to the sky for a pair of matching kites, feeling their two hearts were so tied together that he lost a part of himself like a kite being separated from its string.
The Feeling
Despite the ending like 90% of this story is really heartwarming and sweet I promise!. The relationship between Buddy and his friend, their sweet childlike innocence, and the mischief they get up to with the family dog trailing behind them is so fun. There is something so interesting about the relationship between the two of them. There are other adults living in the house, but Buddy as narrator rarely talks about them. The two of them seem to be left in a world of their own. This creates such interesting atmosphere to the story, like children playing games of make-believe the story feels like it is set in its own world ruled by these two alone.
The friend is a great character to read a Christmas story about. As stated she is an old woman but with some sort of developmental disorder that has left her childlike. Despite this she is shown be capable and independent in her own way. She has never seen a movie, or been further than five miles from home, but she can kill rattlesnakes, build and fly the best kites, and tame hummingbirds. At the same time she has quirks such as refusing to get out of bed on the 13th of every month. Despite being in her 60's and mostly self-sufficient we see her childlike nature in moments where she lets Buddy, only seven, drink whiskey something which horrifies the other adult members of the family. Whatever her qualities Buddy's love for her shines through, and it could be argued that the whole story is a love letter to his friend.
All of the characters in this story work really. Capote writes Buddy as a believable child with moments like his complaining about his Christmas haul being mostly socks and sweaters being incredibly believable and in character for a child. Even side characters like Haha the man they buy illegal whiskey from, who turns out to be very sweet when he sees the two of them telling them to send him a fruitcake instead of taking what little money they have for the whiskey, adds to the charm of the story. Another thing I loved about this story was the prose. Capote has some great lines and descriptions of this southern setting and the farm most of the story takes place on. These descriptions bring the setting to life through sight, sense and feel, and makes the reading an immersive experience.
Finally as a Christmas story I think this short story really captures the message that it is not the presents or the where that makes Christmas memorable. What sticks with us years later are the traditions and the people we did them with. Buddy narrating his memory of his last Christmas with his friend as a way to honor that time and that memory while tinged with sadness is ultimately beautiful and right for the season of love.
Comments