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Authors: Darrel Bristow-Bovey
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suppose. I hadnât buried anything at the spot marked X more valuable than a silver napkin ring, and I had no one to whom to pass the secret map who would have had the slightest idea what to do with a loamy napkin ring.)
Worse than a message is the burden of a Christmas message. Christmas stories are supposed to embody in some way the true meaning of Christmas. The trouble is that no one really knows what the true meaning of Christmas might be, which leads to an awful lot of guff.
There are only so many times that a sensible person can stomach Jimmy Stewart discovering what a wonderful person he really is ( Itâs a Wonderful Life ) or those two chumps in O Henryâs Gift of the Magi giving each other overpriced Christmas presents. Closest to the truth was Scrooge in A Christmas Carol , who discovered that you can buy the affection of the townsfolk by being free with your cash.
I am dwelling on the problem of the Christmas story, you may have guessed, because I donât feel like writing about television. I feel like telling a Christmas story. I couldnât invent one that I liked, so I turned to real life.
I considered telling the true tale of a girl with whom I went to school, whose name was Carol. We called her Christmas Carol, partially because she was head of the choir, but also because she had a bulbous, shiny nose. The last I heard of Christmas Carol, she had married a man from Qatar, converted to Islam and is now living somewhere in Yemen, where I can only hope she has found a veil large enough to conceal her nose. But the story of Christmas Carol lacked zip.
Let me tell you this story instead. It has no message, but that is as it is in real life. My grandfather was a prisoner in an Italian camp during the last world war. He had been a gunner with the Eighth Army in the deserts of North Africa, and had been captured and interned somewhere in Italy. He was hazy with the details: men of my grandfatherâs generation seldom spoke about the war. He did tell one tale. It involved Christmas Day, 1943: the day he called and made slam in no trumps while playing bridge in the shade of a pine tree beside the campâs exercise yard. Never before and never since would my grandfather call and make slam in no trumps.
His bridge partner on that occasion was an Italian guard, whose name I have forgotten. If I tell you it was Luigi, you will guess that I am guessing. Luigi was a young man, almost a boy, just like my grandfather. He was friendly and occasionally brought the prisoners chickens. My grandfather taught him English, but didnât bother to learn Italian in return.
They spoke about home, and played bridge and football together. Luigi didnât get along with the other Italian guards, for reasons that can only be guessed at, but thanks to Luigi, my grandfather always said, the day that he called and made slam in no trumps was the happiest Christmas of his life.
After the war my grandfather returned home and played out the remainder of an undistinguished bridge career, pausing only to set in motion the chain of events that led to, well, me. Luigi disappeared into the gloom of post-war Naples.
In 1993 I was living in Cape Town. A week before Christmas, I went to a local picture shop to frame a sepia photograph of my grandfather as a young man. I had recently discovered it in a dusty box in a garage; it would be a Christmas present for my mother.
The framer was an old man. He stared at the photograph a long time. I was anxious to be going, but he told me a story. It was a story about being a young man in the war, and working as a guard in a prisoner-of-war camp, and about a South African friend, a prisoner, who made the unhappy months bearable, and how later he had remembered the stories of Cape Town, and had moved south, and been happy since.
He spoke in perfect English, with an Italian accent. He had never seen his friend again, but hoped he would. Perhaps they would share Christmas lunch
Worse than a message is the burden of a Christmas message. Christmas stories are supposed to embody in some way the true meaning of Christmas. The trouble is that no one really knows what the true meaning of Christmas might be, which leads to an awful lot of guff.
There are only so many times that a sensible person can stomach Jimmy Stewart discovering what a wonderful person he really is ( Itâs a Wonderful Life ) or those two chumps in O Henryâs Gift of the Magi giving each other overpriced Christmas presents. Closest to the truth was Scrooge in A Christmas Carol , who discovered that you can buy the affection of the townsfolk by being free with your cash.
I am dwelling on the problem of the Christmas story, you may have guessed, because I donât feel like writing about television. I feel like telling a Christmas story. I couldnât invent one that I liked, so I turned to real life.
I considered telling the true tale of a girl with whom I went to school, whose name was Carol. We called her Christmas Carol, partially because she was head of the choir, but also because she had a bulbous, shiny nose. The last I heard of Christmas Carol, she had married a man from Qatar, converted to Islam and is now living somewhere in Yemen, where I can only hope she has found a veil large enough to conceal her nose. But the story of Christmas Carol lacked zip.
Let me tell you this story instead. It has no message, but that is as it is in real life. My grandfather was a prisoner in an Italian camp during the last world war. He had been a gunner with the Eighth Army in the deserts of North Africa, and had been captured and interned somewhere in Italy. He was hazy with the details: men of my grandfatherâs generation seldom spoke about the war. He did tell one tale. It involved Christmas Day, 1943: the day he called and made slam in no trumps while playing bridge in the shade of a pine tree beside the campâs exercise yard. Never before and never since would my grandfather call and make slam in no trumps.
His bridge partner on that occasion was an Italian guard, whose name I have forgotten. If I tell you it was Luigi, you will guess that I am guessing. Luigi was a young man, almost a boy, just like my grandfather. He was friendly and occasionally brought the prisoners chickens. My grandfather taught him English, but didnât bother to learn Italian in return.
They spoke about home, and played bridge and football together. Luigi didnât get along with the other Italian guards, for reasons that can only be guessed at, but thanks to Luigi, my grandfather always said, the day that he called and made slam in no trumps was the happiest Christmas of his life.
After the war my grandfather returned home and played out the remainder of an undistinguished bridge career, pausing only to set in motion the chain of events that led to, well, me. Luigi disappeared into the gloom of post-war Naples.
In 1993 I was living in Cape Town. A week before Christmas, I went to a local picture shop to frame a sepia photograph of my grandfather as a young man. I had recently discovered it in a dusty box in a garage; it would be a Christmas present for my mother.
The framer was an old man. He stared at the photograph a long time. I was anxious to be going, but he told me a story. It was a story about being a young man in the war, and working as a guard in a prisoner-of-war camp, and about a South African friend, a prisoner, who made the unhappy months bearable, and how later he had remembered the stories of Cape Town, and had moved south, and been happy since.
He spoke in perfect English, with an Italian accent. He had never seen his friend again, but hoped he would. Perhaps they would share Christmas lunch
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