A Gift to Last

This was a CBS Special. It is a wonderful story for Christmas. An elderly, bitter father looks back to a Christmas from his youth, and remembers that family, love, sharing, and kindness are the essentials for a full and happy life. Somewhere, in growing up, he had forgotten these truths. Gordoon Pinsent, I believe wrote the story and also starred.

Just a bit more trivia about this wonderful story.

It was shown just before Xmas one year and then was replayed the next Xmas, and the TV series followed a few months later.

The great Melvyn Douglas had a role in the back-story. He plays the present-day Clement Sturgess, the character who is a small boy during the days of the Boer War and is enamored of his gregarious Uncle Edgar, played by Gordon Pinsent. Uncle Edgar helps young Clement learn how to appreciate his emotionally-distant father.

I believe that Gordon Pinsent also wrote and sang the theme song.

I would love to find this on DVD.

I can still remember the theme song to the special and later the series, also written by Gordon Pinsent I believe, a very touching song I felt was about clinging to a past that no longer exists, peopled with children who are gone. The song tore my heart out when I first heard it and does still. I was terribly homesick at the time and the words "to one with shining eyes and tender years, who I'll be holding to my heart and never leaving" made me want to walk the thousand miles home. Although I think of this as a sad story, it seems to me that some of it was very funny. The Canadian actors were pretty good. I think the end of the series was sad though. Wish I could see this again.

This is one of the most beautiful stories about father/son relationships ever presented on television. It is a crime that it is not shown every year. It has been many years since I last saw it, but it remains my favorite Christmas story. In this crazy hectic world of ours, it is nice to look back at a time when things were quite simple, times were tough, and relationships were just as difficult then as they are today. I urge everyone to write to the CBC and ask them to please present this remarkable show again each Christmas. It is a classic that should never be forgotten. So I ask the CBC to brush off this treasure of theirs and please share it with us once again.