Christmas In Plains: Memories

Written by Jimmy Carter

Narrated by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter remembers Christmas in Plains, Georgia, the source of spiritual strength, respite, friendship, and vacation fun in this charming portrait.

In a beautifully rendered portrait, Jimmy Carter remembers the Christmas days of his Plains boyhood—the simplicity of family and community gift-giving, his father’s eggnog, the children’s house decorations, the school Nativity pageant, the fireworks, Luke’s story of the birth of Christ, and the poignancy of his black neighbors’ poverty.

Later, away at Annapolis, he always went home to Plains, and during his Navy years, when he and Rosalynn were raising their young family, they spent their Christmases together recreating for their children the holiday festivities of their youth.

Since the Carters returned home to Plains for good, they have always been there on Christmas Day, with only one exception in forty-eight years: In 1980, with Americans held hostage in Iran, Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy went by themselves to Camp David, where they felt lonely. Amy suggested that they invite the White House staff and their families to join them and to celebrate.

Nowadays the Carters’ large family is still together at Christmastime, offering each other the gifts and the lifelong rituals that mark this day for them.

With the novelist’s eye that enchanted readers of his memoir An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter has written another American classic, in the tradition of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Oct 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9780743563710

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was the thirty-ninth President of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. In 1982, he and his wife founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people around the world. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He is the author of thirty books, including A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety; A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power; An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood; and Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.

Reviews for Christmas In Plains

[fulner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this audio book. Its a great example of the medium. I feel they are always better when read by the author, and Jimmy Carter has a great friendly grandpa voice (something that probably helped him beat Gerald Ford). While many, if not most, of the stories, I had already heard by "reading" "First Lady from Plains" by Rosalyn Carter, this is a slightly different perspective, particularly I enjoyed the early chapters with his boyhood times of through flaming rag balls to celebrate Christmas. Also he reminds us that for some reason, Santa really prefers rich kids to poor kids.

[clark7hallman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Christmas In Plains by Jimmy Carter – This a truly delightful memoir by the 39th President of the United States. It focuses on his family’s Christmas celebrations through the years, beginning when he was quite young through his years after he left the White House and returned to Plains. However, this memoir also provides glimpses his life in Plains, in the Navy, as the Governor of Gerogia, as the President of the United States of America, and his life after the presidency. It’s a thoroughly charming portrait of this acclaimed, humble, compassionate and spiritual man and his family. Amy Carter contributed illustrations for this book.

[revslick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Imagine sitting on an old, front porch in the South listening to your grandfather tell about the old days communicating the message of faith, home, Christmas, and peace. Delightful late-night read filled with messages of peace from a former president that was way ahead of his time.

[phyllis01_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jimmy Carter provides a spare, yet touching look at life in depression-era Plains, Ga.

[annalovesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

ISBN 0743224914 – I’ve got a large collection of Christmas books and thought that Christmas In Plains would fit in nicely. Since then, I’ve read the book and have no desire to keep it – but I am glad to have read it. It’s a nice look at Christmases gone by and a tiny window on the interaction between blacks and whites in rural Georgia over the years.Carter shares his memories of Christmas throughout his life. As a member of a well-off family in Georgia, he is blissfully unaware of any real difference between himself and his black playmates and shares Christmas joys with them as well as with his close family. Even the town figures into the earliest celebrations, with fireworks and church services. Through his years at West Point and in the Navy, including the early years of his marriage and finally reaching his time in public service, when his family grew and grew until, returning to Georgia from the White House, he and his wife find that much has changed – and much has stayed the same. For other former presidents, perhaps the years in office would be their choice for an uplifting ending to a book like this. Carter chooses to end with the beginnings of his time with Habitat for Humanity, a fitting place to leave things for this man who, more than any other recent president, comes across as a normal guy with the ability to relate to the rest of us.I was a little annoyed to find that the first chapter or two never really came into focus. Carter spends most of his ink there pointing out, in various ways, how not racist he is. While I believe that Carter’s an open-minded non-racist, it seemed a little much. On the other hand, bookending the entire tale with his childhood among black neighbors in the 1930-1940s with the story of Curtis and Martha, black neighbors in need of help, is a great choice. Despite being part of a close family, and his mentioning the days before his father’s death, he glosses over that death and its impact on himself, his family and their holidays. The illustrations by Amy Carter would have been cute, had they been done when she was 8. She’s not eight and the only cute factor is that they’re evidence of her closeness to her father. A nice holiday read, just not a keeper.- AnnaLovesBooks