Happy #bookreview day everyone! And happy festive season!
For me, the Christmas season started a couple of weeks ago. We always decorate right after Remembrance Day (the lights outside go up when we have good weather as I would prefer for my husband to not fall off the roof in the snow and ice); this year, though we were tempted to decorate a bit earlier (because it's 2020 and some festive cheer seemed sorely needed) it didn't work out, so it was the same time as usual. The tree was up, the lights were on, and almost every night since the fireplace competes with the tree to see which can light the room more cheerily and cozily.
It's a tie so far.
It's my favourite time of year, and I love all things Christmas. Including Christmas books! I don't always go for the festive-themed reads, but I do always go for cozy. This year though, I wanted all the Christmas warm fuzzies. So, starting mid-November, shortly after the stockings were hung and the tree was trimmed, I started in on the Christmas books.
Which means from now through December, I am going to focus on reviewing the seasonal books I've been reading.
I feel like you should probably go get yourself a cup of hot cocoa and settle in for today's review.
Or cider. That would also be appropriate.
In fact, while I write this, I am curled up on the couch, in a giant fluffy sweater, beneath a purring cat, with a cup of tea, right beside the Christmas tree.
Which is also pretty much the exact position I was in when I read this book.
First up on the "festive reads" list is Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory.
Well, right off the bat, this is essentially a cup of hot cider in a book. It is warm, it is cozy, it is filled to the brim with nostalgia and sentiment and just sweetness.
In this short piece, Capote remembers the Christmas season of his childhood and his connection with his elderly cousin. This dear friendship between two seemingly different people - one a young child, one an elderly woman - is at the heart of their holiday rituals.
I have never eaten fruitcake.
But this story made me want to. It made me want to make a fruitcake, even.
But I know there is no point; never will anything I bake be filled with such love and care as the fruitcakes Buddy and his friend make. Though I think those first hints of winter here - which come much earlier and more harshly in Canada than in the rural Alabama setting of this story - will forever make me feel, "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather." Even without having one myself.
This story is Christmas encapsulated. One of my favourite people on this planet is my maternal grandmother. She is all warmth and comfort. Her house smells like home to me; when I walk up the steps, even now in my thirties, before I get to the door there is the smell of cookies baking or dinner cooking and at that moment I am transported back to childhood. I just took out one of her kuchens from my freezer and enjoyed it, and those tastes remind me of her and her kitchen. She is from the era where you feed everyone you love, and even everyone you don't. Those traditional recipes, my grandmother making them, taste of her care and love, and I am so reminded of that, and of her, in reading this story.
This year will be only the second year I won't be seeing her at Christmastime. With the realities of Covid-19 and 2020, and with my job where I interact with so many people everyday, I've made the choice not to expose my family to anything I may be exposed to. Christmas won't quite be the same without Grandma's pies and her cookies and her old piano in the basement, but reading this story, I was reminded of it all, in that quiet sincerity that Capote has in his writing, and I smiled.
For that, I am thankful this story found me this year.
Okay, what's your opinion on fruitcake? Any holiday traditions that just scream Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) in your life?
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