34 pages • 1 hour read
Richard Paul EvansThe Christmas Box
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Christianity
The Magic of Christmas is understood to be divine, connecting it to the Christian faith. Richard is visited by an angel, whom he understands as a “divine messenger” in his dream (63). Music which permeates his dreams and persists when he is awake leads him to the Christmas Box, which helps him to understand the fleeting, impermanent nature of childhood, and therefore to treasure his time with his daughter, Jenna, as well as his future children. Richard connects his love for Jenna and Mary’s love for Andrea to God’s love for his son, Jesus. This emphasizes the Christian belief system underpinning the text.
The Christmas Box
The Christmas Box, which is empty at the end of the novella, nevertheless feels full to Richard. He believes it to be metaphorically full of parental love, as it used to contain Mary’s letters to her deceased and desperately missed daughter, Andrea. Parental love has a divine element for Richard, as it reminds him of the Christian belief about God’s love for his son, Jesus, and God’s sacrifice of his son to atone for the sins of man: “The sacred contents of that box are a parent's pure love for a child, manifested first by a Father's love for all His children, as He sacrificed that which He loved most and sent His son to earth on that Christmas day so long ago” (125).
The Christmas Box symbolizes the love Richard feels for his children, as well as the love that other parents feel for their children; it reminds him to be present with them. Richard feels forever feels grateful to Mary for the Christmas Box because of its symbolic significance: “Mary had given me the greatest gift of Christmas. My daughter's childhood” (119).
The Boy’s Suit
Richard learns a valuable lesson when his customer reveals that his son has died and that this is why he is looking to buy, not rent, a suit: “The man looked up at me, initiating eye contact for the first time. ‘We'll be burying him in it,’ he said softly” (95). Richard’s failure to guess at this tragedy mirrors his hubristic belief that he will always have time to spend with Jenna at some later point. He fails to grasp the fleeting nature of childhood and, on a broader level, life. The man’s dead son symbolizes the impermanence of life, which starkly reminds Richard about the importance of spending quality time with Jenna. Through the customer’s story, the novella emphasizes The Importance of Familial Love.
