The etymology of nostalgia traces back to the Greek word nostos, meaning “homecoming.” Sounds nice. However, the suffix algia denotes pain, which is not so nice. Distill the two components, add egg yolk, sugar, and nutmeg, and we have the true definition: “painful homecoming.”
Enter Christmas nostalgia, that narcotic and paradoxical warm blanket that drives some of us out of our bird this time of year. We love it; we hate it; we don’t know what to make of it.
To add to one’s confusion, or possibly cure it, consider reading Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” The story carries with it the simple joys of the season. It is sentimental and poignant and captures the warm spirit of a vanished age. But, like its author, the story navigates and finally transcends a brooding underbelly in order to find grace, beauty, and possibly the true spirit of the first Christmas.
Born in 1924, Capote was the acclaimed American author known best for groundbreaking works such as In Cold Blood and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” He’s also known for severe alcohol and drug abuse, which led to long periods of creative stagnation. My early memories of Capote were of a pop culture oddity, giving tipsy interviews inside New York City’s legendary hedonistic discotheque, Studio 54. His drinking caught up with him, and he died young in 1984 at the age of 59. If he left only “A Christmas Memory,” his literary legacy would be solidified. It’s that good.
Readers can’t help but fall in love with the two main characters. They are beautiful and innocent. One is a 7-year-old boy, ignored by his relatives (this is Capote’s most autobiographical work) after his parents abandoned him. The other is his “friend,” an unnamed idiosyncratic and childlike “60-something” distant cousin. She gives the boy the nickname Buddy, after a lad she knew way back when. They lived poor in the 1930s rural South.
The story revolves around the pair’s annual baking of Christmas fruitcakes. They make them for strangers, “people who’ve struck our fancy,” people who showed them kindness throughout the year. The four-day process includes gathering pecans and buying ingredients with their “Fruitcake Fund.” The most expensive is whiskey, and, since it is illegal, they have to buy from a local bootlegger, Mr. Haha Jones, who, though upset his booze will be wasted, donates the quart in return for a future fruitcake. Buddy’s description of their movements and activities is the story’s beating heart. We’re hooked on their merriment, but there’s something uneasy shifting beneath Buddy’s memories.
The genius in this story lies in Capote’s slow cultivation of a muffled tension, achieved through his skillful use of time as a structural element. He entwines two temporal realms: the past, where Buddy’s boyhood unfolds, and the present, where Buddy narrates the tale from a military school he’s been sent to by “those who Know Best.” Although the story maintains a steady, ethereal tone from the opening cue, “Imagine a morning in late November,” to the final lines after Buddy “knows” his friend is gone and looks to the sky hoping to see their Christmas gifts, “a pair of kites hurrying toward heaven,” Capote presents a clear transition from “home” to “pain.” This methodical writerly device delivers a rare literary jolt, akin to a reader seated in a coaster car atop a creaking wooden track. The steady click-clack of the chain accompanies the ascent to its zenith, culminating in a breathless literary freefall. (READ MORE: White House Anti-Christmas Video Has Side Effects)
The magic is produced through Capote’s devotion to the authentic Homeric concept of nostalgia by first laying a thin coat of saccharin sentiments with subtle prose strokes. It all feels real because it is real. We accept that Buddy has witnessed the sublime as a child. This is Buddy’s homecoming, his nostos. But Capote knows that it must collide with the algia, and it does so when Buddy delivers his morose denouement: “I have a new home too. But it doesn’t count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go.” He knows he’s now marooned on a merciless island where old buggies, Victrolas, peeled Satsumas, and Christmas fruitcakes are sneered and ridiculed. He’s no longer a boy but a man, yet he still holds on to the truth and beauty of the past. And here we are back in a paradoxical loop of Christmas nostalgia.
Although most likely unintentionally, “A Christmas Memory” parallels the Nativity. It, too, was a “painful homecoming.” Due to a Roman-mandated census, the Holy Family embarked on an arduous journey back to Bethlehem, Joseph’s hometown. Due to the crowds, Mary and Joseph could not find lodging. But despite the difficulties, they found a way, and the Christ child was born in humble simplicity. This painful homecoming yielded the most extraordinary gift ever bestowed upon humanity.
I wonder whether, on cold NYC Christmas Eve, as the pulsating disco lights inside Studio 54 refracted off the ice cubes of a J&B Rare, Truman Capote still communed with the radiant light of an old “Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don’t know it’s getting dark;” or if he probed the mirror balls for a glimpse of two kites like hearts flitting up toward that black ceiling. If he did, I pray he felt more home than pain.
