How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

by Jeff Guinn

  In 1224, one of the people who made these early Christmases so special became the seventh member of our group, and the first new one since Arthur joined us seven centuries earlier. St. Francis of Assisi encouraged poor villagers to create nativity scenes with a manger and animals to remind themselves that Jesus came into the world humble and poor, just as they were. Francis wrote some of the first popular Christmas carols, so common people had special songs to sing and dance to during their holiday celebrations. Francis’s contributions to Christmas traditions made people love December 25 more than ever—and only about two hundred years after he joined us, St. Nicholas finally became part of those traditions, too!

  St. Francis

  Again, this happened to us rather than because of anything deliberate we did. By the late 1300s, it again became obvious that the way we did things had to change. It was getting too hard to craft all the toys we needed by campfire light in locations that changed every few days. In order to have the most toys possible, and the ones that were made best, we needed some permanent place to make them—a factory, perhaps, or even two. While Nicholas, Felix, Francis, and I loved traveling most, searching out children who needed gifts and then delivering them in the middle of the night, Arthur much preferred staying in his beloved Britain, while Attila and Dorothea were happiest in their native country of Germany. So it was decided that Arthur would establish a toy factory in London, while Attila and Dorothea did the same in Nuremberg. Meanwhile, the rest of us would continue traveling and distributing half of the toys made in these factories. The other half would be sold in city markets; Arthur in London and Attila and Dorothea in Nuremberg would use the money to buy materials and pay their employees.

  It all worked very well, though we missed our three longtime friends. But every few months we had to replenish our supplies of toys, and so we would go to London or Nuremberg—both large cities for their time, though dirty and small by today’s standards—and enjoy reunions there.

  I really think it was because of these two toy factories that St. Nicholas and Christmas became linked in the minds of so many people. Arthur, Attila, and Dorothea tried very hard to hire good craftsmen and craftswomen who just wanted to make toys and not gossip about their employers, and mostly they succeeded. One fellow in particular was a very welcome worker who soon was accepted as a full member of our special companions. Willie Skokan was a Bohemian who could take a bit of string, a splinter of wood, and a few drops of paint and combine them into literally any toy he wanted to make. Willie was absolutely marvelous, and we soon couldn’t imagine how we’d ever been able to get along without him. He seldom spoke, and when he did he was careful never to reveal our secrets.

  But that wasn’t true of some others, though I don’t believe anyone deliberately tried to expose us. Some of our workers in Britain or Germany just couldn’t resist whispering things to their families and friends. By the middle 1400s, stories had spread through Europe and Britain about Nicholas, the ancient Catholic saint who somehow was still around and brought gifts for children at holiday time. In some countries, Germany especially, people began to think that perhaps his special gift-giving time was December 6, the date of Nicholas’s “death” in 343.

  So now, in addition to our year-round tasks, we were faced with not one but three special days when children particularly hoped to receive our gifts. I finally suggested that we gratefully accept these new obligations as opportunities rather than problems.

  “In this way, we can make our night visits three times each year and spend the rest of the time planning our gift-giving and helping Arthur and Attila and Dorothea at the factories,” I said. “Why, we can each choose one or two countries for our special individual attention. It will be more efficient, and great fun besides.”

  So it happened that, each year at holiday time, while Nicholas might roam anywhere, Arthur and his helpers brought gifts in England and all other parts of Britain. Attila and Dorothea took much of Western Europe, while Willie Skokan concentrated on Eastern European countries. Francis led the holiday gift-giving in Spain and Portugal, Felix found Scandinavia to his liking, and no one was surprised when I asked for Italy. The reason, of course, was Befana.

  Everywhere else, legend now had it that holiday gifts were brought by a man—St. Nicholas or a similar male gift-giver with another name. But in Italy, children woke up on January 6 hoping for toys or treats from Befana, an old woman. As Italian tradition had it, when the three wise men began their search for the Baby Jesus, they came to Befana’s house, asking directions to Bethlehem and inviting her to come with them. She wouldn’t give the directions, because she didn’t understand who Jesus was. Afterward, when Befana learned Jesus was the savior, she wished she had gone to give presents to him, too, and so ever since she went out before dawn on Epiphany to leave gifts for any child she could find. What fun it was for me to spend that special time leaving dolls and tops and marbles for children all over Italy! Of course, every few years we would switch countries so we could share in all the different traditions. But it’s also true Befana and Italy remained especially dear to my heart.

  The excitement for us only increased in 1492, when Francis met Queen Isabella of Aragon in Spain and was able to make a place for himself on the first voyage to the fabled New World by Italian sea captain Christopher Columbus. Francis returned with tales of this wonderful new land, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Everyone, especially Nicholas and Felix, couldn’t wait to visit the New World. None of us, though, felt we could leave immediately, for we were still helping build holiday gift-giving traditions in Britain and Europe. Still, I didn’t miss the longing in my husband’s voice as he talked about crossing the Atlantic Ocean someday. I decided then that it might take fifty years, or a hundred, but as soon as it was practical I would insist that Nicholas get on a boat and travel to that new place he so clearly yearned to see for himself.

  About this same time, in 1501 Princess Catherine of Aragon was given in marriage to Prince Arthur of England. Though we didn’t know it at the time, this began a series of events that would result in Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans banning Christmas 144 years later.

  Nicholas, Felix, and I set off for England the next day. We’d hardly arrived in London before my husband and his friend disappeared, hurrying to the docks where Arthur told them the group of colonists was being recruited for the voyage to America.

  CHAPTER Five

  You know you want to visit what they’re calling the New World,” I said to Nicholas one fine early fall evening in 1620. We were spending a few weeks in Nuremberg with Attila and Dorothea, helping the confectioners at our factory there. When we left our gifts of toys for children, we often added a few pieces of candy, leaving these, when we could, in the stockings that their mothers washed and left hanging by fireplaces to dry overnight. Because the candy was always some kind of hard-boiled sweet, it wouldn’t melt from the warmth of the fire. Candy was almost as rare a treat for boys and girls as new toys. We had recently tried something called peppermint candy, which had become available in a few places, and it was very, very good. Attila and Dorothea wanted to be able to make a lot of it at the Nuremberg factory, and quickly—the holidays were only a few months away. But it took time to get the taste just right—too much peppermint flavor made your tongue feel like it was burning instead of pleasantly tingling—and so Attila and Dorothea and Nicholas and I, along with Willie Skokan, who lived in Nuremberg, and Felix, who was also visiting there, were volunteer tasters. The first few attempts were not too agreeable, but as the day passed the peppermint candy tasted better and better, until by late afternoon we thought the confectioners had got it just right.

  Afterward, Nicholas and I returned to the nearby inn where we were staying. Attila, Dorothea, and Willie, who worked in Nuremberg full time, lived in a small house. Felix was staying in their extra bedroom. Since that used up all the available space for guests, my husband and I took a room at a clean, modestly priced inn, and very much enjoyed some rare priva
te time together. We loved all our old companions, but it was also pleasant to have an opportunity to concentrate on each other. In particular, I wanted to talk to Nicholas about the New World of English, Dutch, Spanish, and French colonies across the Atlantic Ocean in a vast land unofficially named America on many maps. Ever since Francis had returned from his voyage with Columbus over a century earlier, my husband had clearly longed to see America himself. But there was always a reason he just couldn’t go quite yet—new toys to test in London, additional Christmas customs in Germany that we had to learn and adopt, or something else of that nature. So, alone together at the Nuremberg inn, with an hour or so to spare before we joined Attila and Dorothea and the others at their house for supper, I decided Nicholas and I would settle the issue for good. I intended for him to go to America, and soon.

  “It would be selfish for me to leave my friends behind,” Nicholas said, pacing about our little room while I sat comfortably in a chair before a small, glowing fire. “Everyone here in Nuremberg works so hard, and Arthur has more than he can handle at the factory in London.”

  “Arthur has Leonardo now,” I reminded him. “That’s lightened Arthur’s load considerably.” It was true.

  In 1519, we’d added another full-time companion. Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant painter and equally imaginative inventor. He colored canvases with extraordinary scenes and filled notebooks with diagrams of machines that could soar through the air like birds or move underwater like fish. Having joined us, he eventually based himself in London with Arthur. There, he did what Willie Skokan did in Nuremberg—inventing new toys was a constant, though delightful, challenge for them both.

  “Leonardo is amazing,” Nicholas agreed. “But that doesn’t change the fact all of us are kept busy every waking minute. Yes, I’d love to visit America, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to have a vacation while everyone else had to remain on the job.”

  “It would hardly be a vacation,” I pointed out. “From all the reports, colonists in America are having a terribly hard time. Most of them have little to eat, some of them fight with the natives, and I believe that one British settlement called Roanoke simply disappeared. We’ve been married for twelve hundred years, Nicholas. I know perfectly well you want to go to America to bring Christmas to the desperate people there whose daily lives consist mostly of hardship. And you should—they deserve Christmas joy, too, and what better way to experience it than to have St. Nicholas among them for the first time?”

  “That’s true,” Nicholas admitted, sitting down in a chair opposite mine. “But we must always be practical, Layla, and though we haven’t spoken of it much, these are dangerous times for Christmas in places other than America. That’s true in England, especially. My place—our place, I mean—may be with Arthur just now, instead of across the Atlantic Ocean. So many things in England have been confused since 1527, when King Henry VIII decided to divorce Princess Catherine of Aragon.”

  From the time we first crossed the channel to England in St. Patrick’s boat, the country had constantly been ravaged by some sort of upheaval, usually war. When there weren’t invaders storming ashore, the English seemed to turn on themselves, fighting each other when there wasn’t some enemy from the outside. When the conflict known in history as “the Wars of the Roses” ended in 1485, it seemed for a while as though there might be peace on the beautiful island nation, particularly when King Henry VII married his son Prince Arthur to Princess Catherine of Aragon. But Arthur, who was going to be the next English king, soon died, and his widow Catherine was then married to Arthur’s younger brother, Henry. When Henry became king, he and Catherine did not get along very well. Henry met another woman named Anne Boleyn who he wanted for his wife instead, but the Catholic Church would not let him divorce Catherine. Furious, Henry simply left the church, taking his country with him, and established a new Church of England. Catherine, who believed very deeply in the Catholic Church, considered herself still married to Henry and raised their daughter, Mary, as a Catholic. Henry ended up marrying four more times after Anne Boleyn and had two more children, Edward and Elizabeth, who were raised as non-Catholics, or Protestants. And this is where problems for Christmas in England began.

  Henry didn’t want anything to do with Catholicism left in England. He gave most of the property owned by the Catholic Church to his friends. New, non-Catholic religious leaders weren’t comfortable with a Catholic saint named Nicholas bringing presents to English children. The name Father Christmas was substituted, which was fine with us. But even the word Christmas became unpopular with the king and his clergy. Some Protestant leaders insisted Christmas was just another way of saying “Christ’s mass”—which was a fact—and mass was Catholic. To them, anything Catholic was bad. They ordered everyone to say Christ-tide, instead. Most people kept saying Christmas anyway.

  “I have the feeling that the attacks on Christmas in England are just beginning,” Nicholas said sadly, staring into the fireplace in our room at the inn. “It might even become dangerous there for Arthur, Leonardo, and our employees at the London toy factory. True, we’ve mostly been able to keep the existence of the factory there a secret, as we have in Nuremberg, but the wrong people might find out. I simply wouldn’t feel right going to America while Arthur was left to deal with such problems.”

  “Leonardo is there to help Arthur,” I said.

  Nicholas smiled. “I love and honor Leonardo, but his talent is for art and invention. He’s not an especially practical man. We need someone in England who has a lot of common sense, who can study complicated matters and suggest solutions. Someone like, well, you, and you can’t help Arthur if we’re off in America.”

  Leonardo

  “No one said we had to be off in America,” I replied. “Nicholas, you and I haven’t been apart for twelve centuries. Though we’d certainly miss each other, this may be a time when we each have something important to do in different places. It won’t last forever—ten years, maybe twenty. Colonists in America need Christmas desperately. Bring it to them. I’ll go to London and work with Arthur to help Christmas through difficult times there.”

  “I think I’d be very lonely in America without you,” Nicholas said, sounding mournful and excited at the same time. I knew he would genuinely miss me—just as I knew he was thrilled at the thought of bringing joyful Christmas traditions to a whole new continent.

  “Well, take Felix with you,” I suggested. “You two haven’t had any adventures on your own since our marriage in Constantinople. Arthur wrote in his last letter that some group is organizing a boatload of colonists to sail to America. They’re going to settle near a previous colony called Jamestown. Let’s get Felix and go to London; surely the two of you can join that brave band or another one, and soon be on your way. Who knows? America may prove to be so wonderful that in a decade or two you’ll send for me, and we can establish a new toy factory there!”

  Nicholas grinned, the same warm smile I’d seen in my dreams so many centuries earlier. “But if I go to America, who will help you taste the peppermint candy?” he asked.

  I glanced pointedly at his waistline. “It’s obvious you’ve sampled more than enough candy for too many years. I expect that in America you’ll lose a few pounds. From all reports, you’ll be lucky to have even a little bread to eat. A diet will do you good.”

  Over supper, we told the others about our plans. Dorothea said she thought Nicholas would miss me even more than he realized. Attila was a little jealous that he wasn’t the one going off to a new land for adventures. Felix whooped with joy when Nicholas asked him to come along to America. Willie Skokan didn’t say very much. He’d brought more samples of peppermint candy from the factory and sat off in a corner tasting them. Willie took such things very seriously. He wanted our peppermint candy to be the best anywhere.

  Willie Skokan

  “I think you should take some of this along with you to London,” he said. “Arthur and Leonardo will enjoy it, and I don’t think there is
a lot of peppermint candy in England yet.”

  Nicholas, Felix, and I set off for England the next day. We’d hardly arrived in London before my husband and his friend disappeared, hurrying to the docks where Arthur told them the group of colonists was signing on for the voyage to America.

  “But there’s something you should know about—” Arthur shouted toward their backs as they disappeared down the street.

  “What would that be?” I asked, as Arthur helped me carry my bags to the guest room in the cottage he and Leonardo lived in not far from their toy factory. Arthur looked and sounded a bit concerned, and this worried me.

  “It’s just that the people organizing this colony are, well, rather different,” Arthur explained. “Have you heard about the group of Protestants here in England who call themselves the Puritans? No? Well, surely you’re aware of how Catholics are quite unpopular with the government and the Church of England. It’s all been very confusing for everyone. First King Henry VIII broke the country away from the Catholic Church, then his daughter Queen Mary made Catholicism the religion of the land again, then her sister, Queen Elizabeth, ordered the country to return to Protestantism, and now King James says Catholics may worship as they please, but clearly favors Protestants.”