A Christmas Memory
When I was in high school I watched a brief presentation on television that left a powerful and lasting impression. The story involved a special friendship between two cousins, a young boy and an older woman, and described their ornate preparations for Christmas. Their excitement was not muted by the fact that they were very poor, or that they seemed to inhabit a world without much in the way of support from other family members. Over the years I have been haunted by this simple story, and its way of evoking the deepest meaning of Christmas: the call to love and live with joy and commitment, even when the forces of the world do not seem aligned in our favor.
Over the years I tried to find the source for this television drama, but without success. And then one afternoon in late November, when the Readers’ Theater Group of Immanuel Congregational Church presented “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote, I was reunited at last with the story that has lived me with these many years. Capote’s re-telling of his own childhood experience of Christmas became the basis for “A Christmas Memory,” and this drama aired on television during the 1970’s. It was a gift to realize at last the author of the story that had so touched me as a youth.
Over the course of my life, I have experienced Christmas in many ways: as receiver and giver, as child and as parent, in times of simple celebration and in moments of lavish festivity, in times of great joy and in times of profound sadness. What has remained consistent through all these varied experiences has been the rich and inexhaustible mystery of the Word made flesh. It is a message that points to the greatest gift of all: the good news that we are loved beyond measure by a God who cares with infinite tenderness for all people. This love is given in order to be received and enjoyed and cherished. It is given that it might be shared so that all people may be embraced equally by this same spirit of divine love.
In a television drama over thirty years ago I saw a reflection of God’s fierce love in a relationship between a young boy and his older cousin. It was a love that blossomed in the midst of meager circumstances, not unlike the love that burned brightly from a manger over 2000 years ago. In this season of Advent, let us open our hearts to the beauty and depth of that compassion, until we are filled with all the fullness of God.
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