Finding the body under the Christmas tree
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
You can’t deny it, Christmas is just three weeks from now. I love the season, but it always comes upon me before I am ready.
I was surprised at a family Thanksgiving celebration when one of my granddaughters said she wanted her boyfriend to come to the family gathering, but he had bad memories of drunkenness and family fights during holiday get togethers. That shouldn’t have surprised me because of the years I worked as a newspaper police reporter in Los Angeles and knew this was one of the worst seasons for family disputes, some ending in fatalities.
In fact, as a college instructor in fiction writing, I recall doing a lecture about Christmas in literature and discovering how many fictional crime stories were about finding the body under the Christmas tree. My research led me to a story that originally appeared in the book, "Murder Ink." Bill Vande Water traced 14 novels with the plot built around a Christmas holiday murder.
Agatha Christie wrote "Murder for Christmas." Charles Dickens’ "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," has a Christmas plot.
And Christmas played a part in Elizabeth X. Ferrars’ "The Small World of Murder." Ngaio Marsh wrote "Tied Up in Tinsel," Michael Innes wrote two novels using a Christmas background, "A Comedy of Terrors," and "Christmas at Candleshoes."
Ed McBain’s "Sadie When She Died," Dell Shannon’s "No Holiday for Crime," and Ellery Queen’s "The Finishing Stroke," were all Christmas plots.
Those were full length novels. The research found 19 short stories of violence on Christmas day, including three by Agatha Christie, two by Damon Runyon, plus short stories by O’Henry. Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout and of course, the famous French detective, Maigret in "Maigret’s Christmas," by Georges Simenon, were Christmas tales. These are just the classic stories. Writers today find ways of tying Christmas wrapping around good mysteries for the holidays. Not all have to be murder and mayhem. My all time favorite is a 1956 short story, "A Christmas Memory," by Truman Capote.
I consider it a favorite mainly because Capote draws the characters so lifelike and it is about fruitcake. I am one of those rare people who loves fruitcake and about the only time I get fruitcake is at Christmas. Capote’s main characters are Buddy, a young boy who lives with sullen, indifferent aunts in the South. He is befriended by an older cousin, a woman who is somewhat mentally retarded and is treated by the adults as a child. The two find solace in each other.
When winter puts a chill in the air, she cries out "It’s fruitcake weather, Buddy" and the two set out to collect the ingredients necessary to bake fruitcakes — pecans, dried fruits, flour, sugar and of course a touch of bourbon whiskey which they buy clandestinely from a bootlegger because they live is a dry county.
Buddy grows up and moves away, only to learn his friend has died. The story ends when he looks toward the sky as "if I expected to see a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven."
This year, I recommend a hilarious story that begins in Leavenworth, Wash., famous for its year around Christmas, called "When Christmas Comes," by Debbie Macomber, a talented writer from Port Orchard, Wash. She wrote this book in 2004, but I predict it will become a classic tale that will bring Christmas cheer to readers for years go come.
It is filled with characters that only Debbie Macomber can imagine for us. It is a contemporary Christmas story filled with plenty of clean, family humor. I would not be surprised if in the future, it becomes a TV special for the holiday season.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470 or by calling up his blog: www.theduncansonline.com/elderstatesman)