Jimmy Carter’s Christmas in Plains (published in 2001) is just what I needed. I needed to be reminded of simple empathy, easy kindness, and joy. I needed to forget my list of everything I’ve done wrong (Too much spent on tips/ gifts/food/wine/chocolate? Too little? And whom did I forget to remember this year? Does my stepdaughter hate her picture on the family card and will I be forgiven?). I needed to forget my list of everything still left to do (wrap the presents, stand in line at Stew Leonard’s for the shrimp and baked ziti, send more Christmas cards with the questionable picture of my stepdaughter and insist to her that she looks really thoughtful and smart, decorate the house more). I needed to sit still and read and feel okay. And after reading Christmas in Plains, I felt absolutely mellow and good and ready to welcome in Christmas NOW, all my lists forgotten as the unnecessary dribble that they are (we will survive without the shrimp).
Carter is a man of peace. Peace is the underlying breath and beat of this lovely and simple recollection of all his Christmases.
Carter writes as if he were your old friend writing you a personal Christmas letter (minus any details about the five hundred activities in which so-and-so family member excelled this year). He writes of the little details that were important to him (eggnog recipe) and includes some bits about the big stuff (negotiating with the Algerians to release the Iran hostages). He hearkens back, without any hokiness whatsoever, to life as a kid on a small-time farm in Georgia (the year grapefruit rolled off a truck and the Carters were the only family who knew how to eat the strange fruit it but nothing could make those grapefruit sweet and so the pigs had a citrusy treat that year).
And he reveals that prayers from the Middle East relieved his pain one Christmas: “President Sadat had announced to the world that his good friend Jimmy had hemorrhoids and made a public appeal for Egyptians – Muslims and Christians – to pray on this holy day that [Jimmy] would be cured, because he was a ‘good man searching for peace.’” And the day after Christmas, for the first time in weeks, “all pain and discomfort went away.”
Yes, Jimmy Carter is a good man. No show-man or self-aggrandizer, he is reflective but not self-absorbed. Carter is appreciative and grateful for all that life has given him but not sickeningly sweet about it nor pandering to some exalted notion of targeted blessedness. Carter knows he has been dealt a good hand and he has worked to give others the same chances he has had. He knows that we all, no matter what our religion is or is not, have the right to a peaceful existence of respect and tolerance, an existence that allows joy to flourish.
What Carter helps me to remember and what I want to share, is that we all have a role to play in bringing about peace and joy. We all have the power to do it: there are people all around us, family and strangers, who can use a little extra patience or kindness or forgiveness. That is our gift to them, the gift that matters, the gift that allows us all to relax and settle down and feel the joy.
Thank you, Jimmy Carter, for sharing your Christmases with me.
Peace on Earth and Joy to All.
