The Christmas Letters

by Lee Smith

Book Overview

In The Christmas Letters, three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It's a down-home Christmas story about tradition, family, and the shared experiences of women.

Here, in a letter of her own, Lee Smith explains how she was inspired to write this celebrated epistolary novel:

Dear Friends,

Like me, you probably get Christmas letters every year. I read every word and save every letter. Because every Christmas letter is the story of a life, and what story can be more interesting than the story of our lives? Often, it is the story of an entire family. But you also have to read between the lines with Christmas letters. Sometimes, what is not said is even more important than what is on the page.

In The Christmas Letters, I have used this familiar format to illumine the lives, hopes, dreams, and disappointments of three generations of American women. Much of the story of The Christmas Letters is also told through shared recipes. As Mary, my favorite character, says, "I feel as if I have written out my life story in recipes! The Cool Whip and mushroom soup years, the hibachi and fondue period, then the quiche and crepes phase, and now it's these salsa years."

I wrote this little book for the same reason I write to my friends and relatives every holiday--Christmas letters give us a chance to remember and celebrate who we are.

With warmest greetings, Lee Smith

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156512376X
• ISBN13: 9781565123762
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

What a great book for Christmas Reading

I received this book as a pre-Christmas book many years ago and have just finished reading it for maybe the fifth time just before Christmas. It is a very quick and engaging read. The Christmas Letters recounts all of the bittersweet memories that surround Christmas. It is not necessarily all happy, but it is all very real. Maybe as I get older, the pathos of Christmas becomes more real - both the sadness associated with memories of the past which can no longer be recreated and the realization that we can only celebrate from that place where we currently live in our lives. When we are in good places, then Christmas is magical. When not, Christmas can be very difficult. Smith touches on both of these points. I am a great fan of Lee Smith's books. I gave this one only 4 stars, but that is in relation to her other books. To me, her best is Fair and Tender Ladies, also written in letter form. Christmas blessings to all.

Cute!

A quick, interesting, wonderful read! You won't be sorry to pick this one up and you won't want to put it down until you are done! I look forward to reading more of Lee Smith's books!

Really enjoyed this book

The Christmas Letters is a short novella by Lee Smith; my Mamaw gave me a copy for Christmas and i read it in one sitting. I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone who writes her/his own Christmas letters).It's an epistolary novel told through the yearly Christmas letters of three generations of rural women, and spans the geography of West Virginia and North Carolina. The letters are somewhat typical of that sort of structure, recounting births and deaths and achievements, yet tell the story of the women's lives, their relationships, their struggles to cope with the hardships each generation is given--a husband off in WWII, a brother brokenly and miserably surviving Viet Nam, divorce, loss of a parent, a child leaving home and choosing a lifestyle you can't understand but try to accept. By the end, one of the letter-writers has come to a point where she addresses her letter frankly, and reveals the subtext behind all of her cheery soldier-on previous letters, and you can go back and see exactly how those emotions were definitely present beneath the surface of the writing of the earlier letters (some you'll pick up as you read them the first time around, others will be a surprise).The book is a lovely quiet holiday read, and one that for me will take its place beside A Christmas Carol as a book to read every Christmas season, to remind me of what I hold dear about the holidays, an embracing of family, heritage, goodwill, charity...in short, the Christmas Spirit.

A perfect way to get the Holiday Spirit

Lee Smith's book is a touching journey through the hearts and minds of three generations of women. When the Southern grandmother takes her first bite of a bagel, and remarks "Whoever thinks this is good has never had a biscuit!," I howled. This is a great little book

Touching,it had a lot of my life in it.

I just finished this wonderful novella.Lots of it will ring true with we babyboomers especially the ones of us just entering the last half of our first century.So much is said by the things left unsaid,If you love touching fiction. Don't miss this one I'm going to send several to friends it will be a wonderful Xmas gift.This is the first I've read by Lee Smith but it won't be the last I'm already searching for hardcover editions of her prior books but I'm so anxious to read other things by this author I may have to settle for paperbacks