Two Novellas: “Red Kettle Christmas”,
“MANHATTAN MIRACLE,”
Anna Schmidt
Available in print and Kindle
The Best Christmas story I’ve
Read Since “A Christmas Carol”…
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| First Edition "A Christmas Carol" |
Imagine it’s December 19th,
1843 and you’ve just bought a first day, first edition of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. You open to the front piece and learn that it
is a ‘ghost story’. Maybe you are surprised and feel that this will be
something very different in Christmas stories. Even if you felt this at the
time, you could not have known that you were about to read an ‘instant classic’
that for the next 170 years would never go out of print.
Could you have thought then in
December 1843 that this little novella, “A
Christmas Carol” would have packed so powerful a punch that it forever
changed the world’s view of Christmas? I
like to think that I would have seen the greatness in “A Christmas Carol”. But that is something I will never know.
I do know I felt that way after reading
“Red Kettle Christmas”. Like, “A
Christmas Carol,” this novella is different from all the other Christmas
stories I’ve read before. This is not a book written to be a Christmas story.
This is a classic story that takes place at Christmas time. This is another
example of the author’s pioneering venture into ‘romance realism’ – a subgenre
of romance in which serious topics are dealt with that traditional publishers
almost always avoid. Her “Winter’s End”
dealt with hospice, and “Try, Try, Again”
with adultery, “Running on Empty”
with pedophilia. These books have been critically acclaimed. “Running on Empty” is a runaway success.
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| The way it was. |
“Red Kettle Christmas” deals with the shame and public ostracism that came
with being an unwed mother in 1947. Not
only is the heroine an unwed mother, who was rejected and sent out into the
world by her parents, she is also a nurse who works and lives in a Salvation
Army hospital home for other unwed mothers.
This is not a typical romance
theme nor is this a typical Christmas story. “Red Kettle Christmas” is a powerful trip back into the past.
Today, in some communities, up to eighty percent of mothers are unwed. It’s the
norm. But it was not so long ago when this was not the case. In 1947, when “Red Kettle Christmas” opens, the
‘greatest generation’ was coming back from the war and the world was in ruins. Mankind
had never seen so much uncertainty as to the future. The atomic bomb made it
possible for man to destroy life on earth. Many at this time saw unwed mothers
as a sign of the final collapse of civilization itself. It was not the unwed
mother herself who was the problem. No, the unwed mother was seen as the canary
in the mine who signaled immediate danger ahead.
Like Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, “Red Kettle Christmas” is of social significance. It is one thing to
help a poor homeless person at Christmas. It is quite another thing to help
someone who society highly disapproves of, someone who poses a risk to society
itself, and someone who is thought to have brought this ‘evil’ upon herself
because of her lack of morality. “Red
Kettle Christmas” takes you back in time and gives you a Christmas story
that has much of the gravitas that has made “A
Christmas Carol” a classic that the
public loves and still reads today.
The Story…
“Red Kettle Christmas” takes
place in 1947 during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. I was there at the
time. Just has the heroine’s little child is held on the hero’s shoulders to
get a better view of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade floats, so too, was I held
on my father’s shoulders. Like the hero of the story, he too was just back from
the war.
Everything described about
New York City in this story is as I remember it. I remember the bakery smells
and Yiddish phrases being spoken in the background.
I can also remember the
unspeakable shame of being an unwed mother. All through high school in the
1950’s I never saw a pregnant student. Young girls would just disappear to live
with relatives far away. Some young girls actually did get kicked out on the
streets by their angry parents. They saw it as their failing as parents. And,
yes, there were a fair share of shotgun weddings. In the play, “Mamma Mia”, the mother was not allowed
to return home in the United States when her parents learned she had become
pregnant in Greece. She just stayed in Greece.
The heroine allows others to
believe that she is a war widow. This has her living a lie of omission. It also
creates a terrible future confrontation with her child when the truth comes
out. Add to this the stress and sorrows of actual war deaths in so many
families and you have all the emotional impact needed for a powerful piece of
literature. And that’s what “Red Kettle
Christmas” is – a work of literature.
I’m sure that not many
readers at the time thought of Dickens’ little paranormal Christmas novella as
being literature but the elements were clearly there. It wasn’t like other
Christmas stories. It had social significance. And it had one of the best happy
endings ever. The same is true for “Red
Kettle Christmas” – in fact, Herne’s story has a surprise combination of
happy endings! While the happy ending is not as powerful as that found in “A Christmas Carol,” no other story is either.
The second novella, “Manhattan Miracle,” is actually a continuation of “Red Kettle Christmas” in the present. I
was so happy to learn that the second story would kept the warm glow of “Red Kettle Christmas” going a little
longer. I didn’t want to let go. I think everyone will enjoy Anna Schmidt’s
novella. Together these two stories make a bundle of Christmas Joy that readers
will find a “Cornucopia of Reading
Enjoyment”!
The Best Christmas story I’ve Read Since “A Christmas Carol”…
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