The Christmas season is upon us like snow on North Dakota. With it comes a sleighful of memories. But how to write meaningfully about this most evocative of holidays in a way that engages the reader?
In a first draft of my client's memoir, I mined a five-page document he had written about the Christmases he remembered from his childhood in Germany in the early 1950s and inserted it into the memoir in chronological order. I found the cultural details colorful and fascinating: the walk through the snow to the Gothic Stadkirche in the center of town; the candles on the tree; the Christmas Eve rolmoepse (rolled herring); the recitation of poems and the small tables of presents for each child. I researched Christmases of the 1950s and found a cache of wonderful photos on the Internet from which to draw for authentic descriptions of street scenes and interiors. My client loved it.
When it came to using the memory in the memoir, however, it was too much. It slowed everything down. It became a "travelogue" of a German Christmas.
