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Christmas Moccasins

by Ray Buckley

3.50 · rating details · 2 ratings · 1 review

A young boy discovers the depth of the Creator's love and forgiveness as he accompanies his grandmother to deliver Christmas gifts. Earlier in the year the three young men who received the gifts cruelly hurt both grandmother and grandson, pushing them down in the snow and taking their coats and Grandmother 's moccasins. In this true story told from his own childhood, Ray B...more

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Published by Abingdon Press

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Jul 28, 2009

Shanna Gonzalez rated it

Shelves: children-04-08

This is a compelling story about courage and forgiveness told from a Native American perspective. On Christmas Eve a young child and his grandmother are robbed of both their coats and Grandmother's moccasins by three drunken youths, and walking home barefoot in the snow Grandmother loses two toes to frostbite. She spends the final quarter of the following year preparing extraordinarily beautiful beaded moccasins to give to her assailants at Christmas.

Ray Buckley is Lakota, Tlingit,...moreThis is a compelling story about courage and forgiveness told from a Native American perspective. On Christmas Eve a young child and his grandmother are robbed of both their coats and Grandmother's moccasins by three drunken youths, and walking home barefoot in the snow Grandmother loses two toes to frostbite. She spends the final quarter of the following year preparing extraordinarily beautiful beaded moccasins to give to her assailants at Christmas.

Ray Buckley is Lakota, Tlingit, and Scots, and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. His stories express Christian teachings within a tribal way of thinking. His theological basis can be a bit fuzzy, and at times he is more mystically intuitive than biblically centered, so each of his stories ought to be be examined carefully.

One potentially concerning element of this story is that in the scene on the front cover where Grandmother is beading the moccasins for her assailants, she is pictured against a background of what looks like an abstractly stylized dreamcatcher composed of wintry trees, with two figures below them. Traditionally a dreamcatcher is modeled after a spider's web and is believed to catch bad dreams or thoughts. Picturing the dreamcatcher seems to be the author's way of showing how Grandmother's courage and faith help her defeat her fear. This may be an attempt to appropriate a culturally recognized symbol for a redemptive interpretation, and I'm not settled on whether this is a good use of the symbol.

Another potentially difficult element of the story is that Grandmother performs a water-cleansing ceremony before making the moccasins, and again before delivering them:

Carefully she dipped her hands into the basin again and again, patting the length of her hair, her shoulders, her torso, and her legs. In October, with no stream unfrozen, it was her way of cleansing her spirit -- the way of beginning something sacred. In the twilight of the kitchen, my grandmother was praying.

I am not familiar with this kind of spiritual cleansing ceremony, but it reminds me enough of smudging (wafting fragrant herbal smoke as part of prayer) to suggest that this may be another cultural practice rooted in tribal religious tradition. However, one might simply interpret this as the author does, as a way of ritually cleansing oneself from the effects of another's violence, when a full bath is impossible.

Although these cultural elements are somewhat troubling because of their association with non-Christian religious practices, Grandmother's forgiveness has a ringing beauty that is well worthy of setting before children's eyes, and this forgiveness is presented through a lens of faith and grace. As she sets out to deliver her gifts, the reader sees an owl (traditionally considered a harbinger of terror and death) staring out from the page as Grandmother says to the child, "We're here to do the Creator's work." When she hands the gifts to her assailants, she says simply "I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. God bless you," and they are rendered speechless.

The story ends with the narrator's statement that "In the small house were captives of God's love. But we were truly free, liberated by the same love." In returning good for evil Grandmother expresses the extravagant love of God toward ill-deserving people, fulfilling the command that Christians "not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21). The young men, embodiments of her fear, are rendered powerless by her forgiveness.

Because this story illustrates so beautifully the power of faith-filled forgiveness, I recommend it despite its inclusion of symbols which have traditionally been associated with traditional tribal religion. It speaks directly to the fear, anger and despair of Native American people who remember in their bones the robbery and slaughter of their recent ancestors -- the Cherokee Trail of Tears and the Navajo Long Walk are only two examples of just this kind of evil worked against entire nations of Native people. This story of hope and restoration, rooted in faith in God, is very timely.(less)

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Jul 25, 2011

Karen Weatherwax added it

Nov 09, 2010

Chelsea marked it as to-read

Shelves: kids-to-read, christmas

Mar 23, 2010

Helen L. rated it

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