The Melodeon

The Melodeon was the original title of this Christmas tale by Glendon Swarthout for Doubleday back in 1977. It was a Reader’s Digest Condensed book and made into a CBS-TV holiday movie starring Jason Robards, Eva Marie Saint and Joanne Woodward in 1978 under a different title, A Christmas To Remember. This is now a rare edition, though, available only from used bookstores on abebooks.com . St. Martin’s Press reissued this novella under a better title, A Christmas Gift in 1992 in a flashier mass market edition, which is the better edition you’ll find available on Amazon and in used bookstores. A Christmas Classic, with "Christmas" in its title, Finally! A youngster relates how his grandparents donated a valuable family heirloom, their melodeon, to the church in an unselfish act of giving one Christmas during the Depression when they had nothing to give each other.