The New Christmas Novel Teaches How to Heal a Broken Past

"The stories of our lives, far from being fixed narratives, are under constant revision. The slender threads of causality are rewoven and reinterpreted as we attempt to explain to ourselves and others how we became the people we are." —Gordon Livingston, M.D.

Richard Paul Evans has been writing Christmas stories for the past 25 years. It started in 1993 when Evans self-published a small book, The Christmas Box, which he wrote for his daughters. Evans advertised the book locally in Utah, where he lives. It began to spread and eventually started hitting bestseller lists. Once the book started selling, copies were purchased around the world. Evans got a multi-million dollar book deal for it and it has since sold over 10 million copies.

The Noel Letters

Source: Benjamin Hardy

Since then, Evans has been written some of the most enduring and best-selling modern Christmas books. His latest, The Noel Letters, which came out this week, details the story of a girl, Noel Post, whose father died. He owned a bookstore and left it to her. For much of her life, she had a false narrative about her father, and Evans takes you down a journey of discovery detailing through real emotions how the past lives in the present. Ultimately, Noel comes to realize that her view of her father was entirely false and that far from being the terrible villain she remembered him to be, he was a hero to so many.

The Past Is a Meaning, and It Is Flexible

Evans demonstrates how a life of psychologically rigid thinking can be changed in a moment with the right paradigm shift. This message is incredibly important today. We don't have to be fixed in how we view things. Also, the people we may believe were enemies could become friends. It's all about the point of view we choose to take and the meaning we give.

Of this, the psychiatrist Gordon Livingston, M.D., said, “Each of us have similar latitude in how we interpret our own histories. We have the power to idealize or denigrate those characters that inhabit our life stories. We just need to experience both alternatives as reflections of our current need to see ourselves in certain ways, and to realize that we are all able color our past either happy or sad.”

Evans is known for helping his readers find hope and healing. In this book, he helps the reader look at their past differently. And there is a great deal of science to support Evans' beautiful story. For example, research on memory shows that it is constantly changing and being updated, based on where we are at in the present. We aren't defined by the past. Quite the contrary—our view of the past is actually defined by where we are, mentally and emotionally in the present. As psychologist Dr. Brent Slife states in the book Time and Psychological Explanation:

"We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. ... Our memories are not “stored” and “objective” entities but living parts of ourselves in the present. This is the reason our present moods and future goals so affect our memories."

People Can Change

Here's how Evan's book starts:

"When I was young, my father taught me something that has given me considerable insight into humanity: As you walk through life, he said, don't be surprised to find that there are fewer people seeking truth than those seeking confirmation of what they already believe.

My father was right. I'm amazed at the mental gymnastics we go through to protect our beliefs—even when they're our own worst enemy. Sometimes it seems the shakier the belief, the tighter the grip.

I'm not judging humanity as much as I'm judging myself, as that perfectly described me when this story took place. This is a story about the lies I nurtured and what happened when they were exposed to the truth. You could say this is the story of my awakening."

Trauma can be healed. The meaning of former experiences can be changed. Our views can be changed. The Noel Letters is a modern-day Christmas Carol; an incredibly important message in our polarized and intolerant world. It is the message that perhaps things are not always what they seem and that relationships and false paradigms can be healed.