Christmas in Plains by Jimmy Carter

 

Summary (from the publisher): Jimmy Carter remembers Christmas in Plains, Georgia, the source of spiritual strength, respite, friendship, and vacation fun in this charming portrait.

In a beautifully rendered portrait, Jimmy Carter remembers the Christmas days of his Plains boyhood—the simplicity of family and community gift-giving, his father’s eggnog, the children’s house decorations, the school Nativity pageant, the fireworks, Luke’s story of the birth of Christ, and the poignancy of his black neighbors’ poverty.

Later, away at Annapolis, he always went home to Plains, and during his Navy years, when he and Rosalynn were raising their young family, they spent their Christmases together recreating for their children the holiday festivities of their youth.

Since the Carters returned home to Plains for good, they have always been there on Christmas Day, with only one exception in forty-eight years: In 1980, with Americans held hostage in Iran, Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy went by themselves to Camp David, where they felt lonely. Amy suggested that they invite the White House staff and their families to join them and to celebrate.

Nowadays the Carters’ large family is still together at Christmastime, offering each other the gifts and the lifelong rituals that mark this day for them.

With the novelist’s eye that enchanted readers of his memoir An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter has written another American classic, in the tradition of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Review: In this simple memoir, former president Jimmy Carter details some of his most memorable Christmas Days throughout the course of his life. From his childhood days in Plains, Georgia to his Navy years with a young family and from the governor's mansion all the way to his time in the White House and Camp David, his emphasis has been on the simple joys and a brief break from hard work to enjoy and celebrate the day with family. 

This book is short and to the point and absolutely assumes that the reader has some prior knowledge of who Jimmy Carter is and the trajectory of his life. I loved hearing memories of the humble origins of a man who eventually became president. While he makes it clear that he was fortunate in comparison to many of his neighbors and friends, he still had a very simple lifestyle and just a few Christmas indulgences every year. It is this humble nature that characterized his life and his time in the White House and that sense is carried through every chapter of this book. 

I do wish he had shared more personal remembrances to highlight the relationships in his life. Although he mentions falling in love with his wife, there are no real personal stories about her or any of his children to give the reader a sense of who they each were or what their holidays were like together. This may have been to protect their privacy, but it would have been nice to read. The book is also somewhat scattered in nature and jumps around in time significantly. While it clearly would not have been published but for the illustrious name of its author, it was still a sweet, little memoir about enjoying the simple things in life. I actually initially read this in 2010 but never wrote a review and had nearly forgotten about my first reading when I picked it up for this second read through. 

Stars: 3