Smith - The Christmas Letters

Bless Lee Smiths heart! Once again, the novelist from Chapel Hill, N.C., has proved that nobody knows Southern women better. Once again, her prose is apparently effortless.... Once again, she has crafted a sparkling little gem of a story brimming with wit, charm, heartbreak, and even, this time, recipes. Chicago Tribune

One of our most accomplished authors scores again.... joys, tragedies, recipes, and reflections make an affecting narrative that ends much too soon. Highly recommended. Library Journal

All the gladness and sadness of life are found in this compact volume.... [The Christmas Letters] reminds us how often the ties that bind can stretch to the breaking point and that theres no better time than Christmas to mend the fraying seams. Southern Living

A poignant story of public and private courage, ordinary hardship, and fragile hope; but mostly, it is a story of love. Country Living

You will devour this collection. Booklist

A perfect heart warmer for chilly winter days and a fun stocking stuffer. Womans Day

With her typical easy wit and down-home charm, Smith fashions an epistolary novella from that most infamous of genres, the annual family letter that often arrives in Christmas cards.... A delight. Kirkus Reviews

If theres a better Southern writer writing now than Lee Smith, I dont know who it is. The Southern Pines (North Carolina) Pilot

Miss Smith, one of the Souths treasured voices, writes plainly and touchingly of the familial triumphs, discord, heartaches, and joys that accrue to become our lives. The Washington Times

Getting to know [Smiths] characters, laughing with them and sharing their sorrows is a rich and satisfying experience to be savored.... a strong oral tradition shines through her work. The Charleston (West Virginia) Sunday Gazette-Mail

In Smiths hands [the epistolary novel] becomes a supple instrument for revealing character and inner contradictions. Newsday

[Smiths] books bring laughter, tears, and joy, and always satisfy. Richmond Times-Dispatch

Chock-full of homespun locutions and details... [The Christmas Letters] exudes genuine charm. The Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer

The Christmas Letters is a sweetheart of a little book. The Columbia (South Carolina) State

A story of personal triumph and learning to recognize what really matters. Nashville Life

[The Christmas Letters] should stand out for its ability to find tiny, rare gems in the midst of ordinary life. The Dallas Morning News

If everyone wrote letters as rich and revealing as Lee Smiths characters do in The Christmas Letters, the holiday missives that stuff peoples mailboxes would be prized works of art.... Its a tribute to women, and their ability to endure. The Salisbury Post

Lee Smith has given her many fans a present in this delightful novella.... Smiths genius shines through. Winston-Salem Journal

NOVELS
The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed
Something in the Wind
Fancy Strut
Black Mountain Breakdown
Oral History
Family Linen
Fair and Tender Ladies
The Devils Dream
Saving Grace
The Last Girls
On Agate Hill

SHORT STORIES
Cakewalk
Me and My Baby View the Eclipse
News of the Spirit
Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

A Novella

LEE SMITH

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

1996 by Lee Smith.
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents
are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

This novella is based on a short story with the same title that appeared
in the December 1995 issue of Redbook magazine.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for a previous edition of this work.

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-858-3

For my family

Dec. 24, 1944

Dear Mama and Rachel,

It is the day before Christmas and though I know I should be so happy with my own sweet angel baby Mary who lies right here beside me as I write this letter, I will tell you the truth. I am weepy, and cannot hold back my tears. Why do you reckon this is so, when Mary and me have everything we need here?

Why, we have got a room of our very own nestled up under the eaves of Bills parents house, it is a nice little room too, with a low roof that slopes up to a point at the top and the prettiest wallpaper featuring a trellis design covered all over in the most beautiful morning glories you can possibly imagine. They are a deep purply blue, and the trellis is white, it is lovely beyond belief. You know I have always been partial to morning glories. Also in this room there is a big iron bed painted white, a rocking chair, a night table with a funny green lamp that has a yellow lampshade with ball fringe all around it, and a little homemade desk where I now sit to write you this letter. There is also a washstand with a Blue Willow pitcher and bowl and an old black-painted trunk where I can lay my Mary down when I change her diapers. She has a little bassinet as well, very old, it has been in Bills family for years and years though nobody knows where it came from.

So Mary and I are well equipped, and should not want for a thing in the new year of our Lord 1945, not a thing in the world except to come back to West Virginia, which we cannot do.

It is so different here, all flat brown fields which stretch out from this farmhouse in three directions as far as the eye can see. But in the fourth direction, Southnow this is the view from our little round windowthere is the wide dark Neuse River moving slowly and mysteriously toward the Ocean which I have not yet seen and can scarcely imagine though Bill has promised to take us when he comes home. And way across the river, theres the town. I can see it better at night when its lights make a pretty reflection in the water, like jewels. In fact the name of the movie theater in town is the Bijou which means jewel if I am correct. It is the colored lights of the Bijou which twinkle in the water come dark, how I love to look at them.

Still I wish I could have come back up home to have my baby, and stayed with you all until Bill gets out of the War, but he would not hear a word about it, not a word, saying that No, his own parents would take good care of his wife and baby. Well, it is the other way around, if you ask me, since Bills mother is sick so much. Mrs. Pickett is a woman who was beautiful once upon a time, I know it is true for I have seen the pictures. I need to remember that she got spoiled because she was the only child of wealthy parents, and had her way in everything, that this was her parents house and farm which Bills father is fast running into the ground, according to all. Come to mention it, Im finding out that Mr. Slone Pickett has got a reputation around here as a lifelong neer-do-well, and a gambler and drunkard besides.

I must say that Bill did not breathe a word of all this to me, and in fact I wonder if he even knows the extent of his fathers Reputation. But it may have been that Mr. Pickett minded his Ps and Qs better when Dennis and Bill were here working with him, and has only hit this new low since their departure for the War.