read this my senior year in high school in my English class. loved the story and liked the movie

Life is always full of oddities; we often find the deepest bond with people we least expect defying all the norms set by the society. But such is our life. Strange! Odd! Surprising! Repulsive! Pleasing! Friendship is one such human (or at least we think so) connection which goes beyond the boundaries of color, race, caste, religion, nationality, age and others, perhaps most humane of all our relations or should I say most natural.




link: source


We have here our narrator, Buddy, an observant, romantic man digs his memories out of bygone times and reflects upon his friendship with a sixty something woman who is superstitious as she could not muster courage to leave the comforts of bed on thirteenth day of a month, for the dangers associated with the number thirteen may be too overpowering against the probable pleasant surprises of the day. Superstitious maybe she, but aren’t we all are, only the levels and the kinds of the superstitious may be different. However, narrator reveals a intriguing secret right at the outset of the tale, she has not aged beyond childhood, stuck somewhere there, where adventures of heart decide our actions than the reasons of brain, in the realm of time. She feels comfortable only with strangers, as if they are her truest friends, perhaps the people who are not acquainted with them, do not judge them with the probing eyes, and they do not have to put up with the shame of being themselves caught off guard by ‘others’, but isn’t she like all of us?


The narrator and woman of sixty-something find perfect companions in each other since one understands the desires and dilemmas of the others, just like perfect friends. On coming of a winter morning in November they feel an adventurous urge, to rise form the hearts for making their Christmas memorable. On the decisive supper, they start discussing tomorrow, its probable prospects which may lie in the embryo of time. The desires of both friends to savour Christmas stumble across a profound question of human existence, the question manifests itself in the name of ‘money’ which is a prerequisite in our lives to savour the tastes of our desires getting fulfilled. The ‘fruitcake fund’ of both friends is explored to confirm as to whether the fund generated out of various petty business enterprises such as ‘Fun and Freak museum’ would give them liberty to express their amusing yearnings, they decide perhaps they need to carry a bit more of such weird and outlandish activities to mitigate the domineering and overbearing enigma of ‘money’.


The romantic tale rides on the theme of memory, how memory defines our existence, the reminiscences of our past continue to affect our present and which in turn underlines our future. As it is often mentioned in the domain of psychology that we always try to catch up with our present, the narrator of story tries to look into his past, as if it is situated like a distant star in the dimension of time which could only be looked at from an unsurpassable distance, to look for some divine message rising out of realm of distant past, to define and soothe the wounds of his present, from the savoured past with the woman of sixty-something.




link: source


There are obvious autobiographical elements in the story as Truman Capote years later acknowledged about one of his Christmas memories from the childhood. The sentences are short and precise having just one or two clauses, to produce an immediate effect on reading them, or at times to subvert the effect produced by the preceding ones. The vocabulary of the story is rich with each word is picked up with the precision of a surgeon to convey the specific and accurate meaning, the prose composed out of such peculiarities conjures up a very romantic and beatific effect which satiates the quivering senses of the reader.


The gorgeous tale talks about how human relations work, various human emotions such as love, longing, yearning express themselves in our lives, and how we behave with the people associated with those profound emotions. We may yearn for people who we love with our heart and memories associated with them, to relish and relive those memories but at times, we may have to make our ways apart from those people and those memories, perhaps with a tinge of nostalgia in our hearts, and that’s what the life is all about- to move on!

This is such a lovely little book and a beautifully wrought gem of writing. I would go so far as to call it a prose poem. Capote relates the poignant memory of a very significant and loving family member in his childhood - an older cousin (she was in her sixties; he was seven) who brought him joy and kindness while sharing her own childlike sense of wonder and enthusiasm for life. The dust jacket says she was his cousin "Miss Sook Faulk, but Capote refers to her in the book as "my friend."

"It's fruitcake weather, Buddy," she says to him one cold November morning and off they go with "a dilapidated baby carriage" to gather "windfall pecans" for Christmas fruitcakes, thirty-one of them, one of which they mail to the White House. Capote's cousin can't "sleep a hoot" on Christmas Eve and says to him, "'My mind's jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs. Roosevelt will serve our cake at dinner?'" Whether or not Mrs. Roosevelt does, thank-yous do come from the White House and are put in scrapbooks with other thank-yous and postcards from "people who've struck our fancy" and also receive fruitcakes like the "Baptist missionaries to Borneo," or the "knife grinder who comes through town twice a year," or "a California Couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the front porch."

Why did this book touch me so? Besides the beautiful writing and the lovely story, what I loved the most about this book was the special memories it brought back of older relatives and teachers who were kind to me in my childhood. Those memories exist sixty years later. We never forget those special people in our lives whether or not they were part of our holiday memories. The holiday memories make it even more special.

This particular 2006 (50th anniversary) edition is delightfully illustrated by Beth Peck. Amazon describes the age range as 3 to 7, and School Library Journal says grade 3 and up. I disagree with both regarding age range. I don't think a three to eight year old would have any sense of the poignancy and wistful beauty of this book. If I had to give this book an age range, I would say 12 or 13 years old and up. It is 48 pages and comes with a CD beautifully narrated by Celeste Holm.

This is a hardcover, not an ebook, but for some reason this entry combines them.

Buddy ist sechs Jahre alt und lebt in Alabama bei seinen Verwandten. Seine Eltern sind getrennt; er sieht beide nur selten. Über die Weihnachtstage soll er zu seinem Vater nach New Orleans reisen…
* Meine Meinung *
Dieses nur schmale Buch lässt sich sehr schnell lesen. Die Geschichte ist schnell erzählt und eigentlich nichts Besonderes. Dennoch hat sie mich berührt und es geschafft, einen bleibenden Eindruck bei mir zu hinterlassen.
Aus Sicht des sechsjährigen Jungen wird erzählt, wie er dieses ganz besondere Weihnachtsfest erlebt hat. Er hat endlich seinen Vater „kennengelernt“ und der Vater seinen Sohn.
Mir hat die Geschichte sehr gefallen, und ich werde sie bestimmt noch öfter lesen.

This story is just wonderful; it still moves us deeply and impacts its readers. What is it that makes this story so influential, that it speaks so powerfully to people across cultures, religions, generations, and geographies.

I suppose it is so special because it dwells so minutely on 'certain specificities;' in its local flavor, its food, people. Since this is done so beautifully, without indulging in sentimentality of any sort, the story deeply resonates with readers. Capote captures something beautiful in the relationship between a 7-year-old boy and his much older cousin. The truth of this seeps into whosoever lays his eyes upon this story. It is the writer's ability to put this 'essence' of human relationships on paper. Most of us know this essence and how it feels; however, Capote makes us see it, feel it, offers us in the form of a story. It is presented as a material object. We recognize it: its vitality, its enduringness in our guts.

The story, in very explicit ways, tells us that no matter where one is in life and in whatever condition; love, genuine companionship, truth always matter. Likewise isolation, lack of love and concern, recognition pains each one of us irrespective of what identity markers we bear. However, we somehow tend to believe that those on the margins are somewhat less. In others words, we often assume that some people matter less.

Since we all carry within us both great experiences, and not so great ones. The story suggests to us what matters most in life, how even small things could give so much pleasure because they are real and genuine, and how, equally, small things can damage us deeply even by the so-called well-intentioned 'well-wishers and concerned human beings.'

In the story, the boy is just plucked out of his cherished territory and sent elsewhere. This pains him as deeply as any adult pain. Similarly, his sixty-year-old cousin is often ignored and chided just because she does not fit into someone's else world. Just because the two of them could not defend themselves or argue back, they are subjected to these pains.

Another great aspect, now I will digress a little, of the story is that it does what a Christian Proselytizer cannot (but a gay guy can).

Once read, on subsequent readings, one should read it aloud. It redeems the very core of being.

This is one of the sweetest, most nostalgic of little stories I’ve ever read.
If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it! It’s a story anyone of any age can enjoy, but the older one gets, the more meaningful stories like this one are. No wonder this book is considered a holiday classic! 

“It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.”

A bittersweet tale that roused my own memories of Christmas past. I loved the description of the flurry of activity of baking. "Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke." I could smell the fruitcake baking, as if I had one in my own oven!

The illustrations are exquisitely drawn and quite lovely. My favorite is the one where the cousins, one is seven and the other "is sixty-something," fly their homemade kites together in a field of gold while Queenie, the dog, watches. They share a wonderful sense of excitement at being alive together and being "each other's best friend."

Short and fun.

"It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have."
— Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory

Winter, 1956

It’s always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It’s fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."
The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together—well, as long as I can remember.

And so, another shoestring adventure begins for Buddy, our narrator, his cousin Sook Falk, and Queenie, their little rat terrier, as off they scoot to gather windfall pecans - the first ingredient for dozens of fruitcakes that will be sent far and wide. But creating such a prize-winning confection requires many elements, whiskey being the most expensive and difficult to procure. Our band of bakers has saved every penny all year, and despite alcohol being considered sinful, they know just where to secure a bottle. After all, it isn’t fruitcake without a nip of the good stuff.

"If you please, Mr. Haha, we’d like a quart of your finest whiskey." His eyes tilt more. Would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too. "Which one of you is a drinkin’ man?”
"It’s for making fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking."
This sobers him. He frowns. "That’s no way to waste good whiskey."

Capote writes with the pen of a poet, and this touching short tale is a timely reminder that our fondest Christmas moments aren’t dependent on flashy falderal or glitzy goodies, but come from time spent with those we love who love us in return.

I wish all who celebrate it, a very Merry Christmas!

Capote writes beautifully in this autobiographical short story of the friendship between he and his elderly cousin, his “special friend”. It’s a tender story on the power of love and simple pleasures to bring joy even amidst extreme poverty and living among disapproving and unloving relatives.

My favorite passage:
““My, how foolish I am!...You know what I've always thought? I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes 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.”

Published in 1956 by Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory is a beautifully written tale of love and friendship, that can be read and loved by all ages. It’s about the friendship of 7 year old Buddy, and his distant cousin Miss Sook, who is in her 60’s. They share a house together with numerous other relatives.
Every year on a morning in November, Miss Sook will announce "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat." And so begins their yearly ritual of gathering together windfall pecans and all the other numerous ingredients needed to bake 30 fruitcakes.
This is what Christmas should really be about. Just beautiful!

This was such a sweet, sweet story. I had to wait for it from the library hence why I read it in January. I've got the movie version waiting for me to see next. The book was written in 1956, the movie in 1997 starring Patty Duke, Piper Laurie and Eric Lloyd as Buddy. The About the Author written in the back of the book says it all:

"Until he was ten years old, Truman Capote lived with a family of distant and elderly cousins in a small town in rural Alabaman. A Christmas Memory is a frankly autobiographical story about those years and especially of his relationship with one of the cousins, Miss Sook Faulk. The photograph on the cover of this edition is of the author and Miss Faulk, who died in 1938 while Mr. Capote was a student at a military academy in New York State."

Unfortunately my copy of the book is missing the picture.