How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

by Jeff Guinn

  Sadly, Alan was right. In early June, Parliament announced again that celebrating Christmas—or Easter, for that matter—was against the law. Violators would be punished. There was no explanation of how they would be punished. That was left to the public’s imagination. But there was no flexibility in this edict. Christmas could not be celebrated publicly or privately. No church services, no carol singing, no gifts, no feasts. Any of these activities would be cause for arrest. Though Parliament still couldn’t find money to pay its army, it did set aside funds to pay for a militia, or Trained Band, in each county. These men would enforce the new no-Christmas law.

  As a gesture to the poor working class who were losing their beloved holiday, Parliament added that, from now on, one Tuesday of each month would be made into a nonreligious holiday when no one would be required to go to their jobs. This only proved Parliament had no real understanding of what Christmas truly meant; the wonderful, traditional celebration of December 25 had nothing to do with not having to go to work, and everything to do with giving joyful thanks to God for the gift of his son.

  After the new, stern law was announced, Parliament was concerned by the negative public reaction. I, on the other hand, was thrilled. The time had finally come. With the right planning, it might just be possible to rouse the public spirit and save Christmas in England after all.

  I began cautiously in mid-June, right after news of Parliament’s edict reached Canterbury. I asked Alan and Elizabeth to quietly talk with their friends and sound out whether any of them might be willing to risk reprisal by joining in a public protest on behalf of Christmas. I realized, of course, that for the greatest impact the demonstration should take place on December 25 itself, but six months would be barely enough time to recruit sufficient participants.

  “You must be aware, Layla, that every town in England is riddled with spies for the Puritans,” Alan warned. “Here in Canterbury, that is especially true. Mayor Sabine must have informers all over. If the wrong person learns that you are attempting to organize a Christmas protest, something terrible might happen to you.”

  I was willing to accept the risk. I had now been living in Canterbury for five years. I knew that most of its people were good-hearted, hardworking men and women who loved Christmas and resented being told they could no longer have it. Avery Sabine’s spies might be numerous, but they were mostly obvious, too, in their Puritan black and with their disdainful, superior expressions.

  It would be enough, at first, to suggest to people that there might be some way to make it clear to Mayor Sabine and to Parliament that Canterbury and its surrounding towns would have Christmas whether the law allowed it or not. There need be no immediate mention of a demonstration on Christmas Day. Otherwise, people might decide to march before we had recruited a large enough number to defy reprisals—a group of fifty might all be arrested, but there was no jail in Canterbury or anywhere else in England that could hold a thousand. Public indignation was already widespread, but it would grow even more intense when the holiday was imminent.

  And so Alan and Elizabeth began making discreet inquiries, and I did the same. At work in the Sabine house, I was particularly careful since I knew at least some of the employees there had to be informers. Only to Janie and Melinda did I carefully mention the possibility of public action on behalf of Christmas, and they both told me they would be willing, even eager, to participate. Shopping for Sunday dinner in the Canterbury marketplace, I made the same suggestion to several people I saw there on a regular basis. A few replied that they had no desire to incur Puritan wrath, and I could not blame them for that. But most liked the idea, and one or two even mentioned the Apprentice Protest of 1645 in London, which pleased me. If that event was still in public memory, think how effective a larger, better organized demonstration might be!

  Not surprisingly, I found strong, if secret, support among non-Puritan church leaders, who were being allowed to conduct services so long as they did not violate the new Parliamentary strictures. In particular there was Father Joel, a staunch Catholic who had been reduced to holding Sunday services in a barn. Because his responsibility was to protect his small congregation’s beliefs in general, he told me, he would not personally be part of any Christmas protest I planned. But he could, at least, offer me the use of the barn. Large, clean, and well away from view several miles outside the walls of Canterbury, it stood atop a sprawling hill. No one could approach closer than two hundred yards in any direction, Father Joel said, without being visible, so if I held meetings there I could post lookouts and not have to worry about the area’s Puritan-funded Trained Band sneaking up to arrest us.

  By late September, I felt we had enough supporters to call a meeting at the barn, where we could discuss more specific plans for a demonstration. Parliament’s attention, for the moment, was on issues other than Christmas—the king was being stubborn during negotiations, refusing to give up most of his divine right powers—but December 25 was now just three months away, and more people were beginning to realize that this year Christmas really was being taken away from them for good, unless they did something to prevent it. We now had to begin our work in earnest.

  “How many people do you expect to come to this meeting?” Elizabeth asked, keeping her voice very soft. It was late at night and Sara had long been in bed, but we still didn’t want her to overhear if she happened to be awake. “Six? A dozen? More?”

  “I would think twenty or even thirty,” I said. “All of them are known and trusted by you, Alan, or me. There won’t be any strangers there.”

  “Well, there will be a few you haven’t met, Layla,” Alan corrected. “I’ve made the rounds of the surrounding farms and found a few good fellows who ought to be great additions to our group. We’ve done what we can to emphasize to everyone that we must keep our effort completely secret. I believe they understand. We all certainly remember Blue Richard Culmer’s smashing of the stained-glass windows of the cathedral. No one doubts how severely we’ll be treated by the Puritans if they find us out, but we all are willing to take that chance.”

  “You’ve made it clear to them that there will be no violence on our part?” I asked. “Everyone understands that whatever we do, it will be peaceful?”

  “Christmas is dedicated to the glory of the Prince of Peace,” Alan said solemnly. “It would dishonor him if we raised a hand against anyone, even those who might raise their hands against us.”

  The night of September 30 was unseasonably chilly. A brisk wind blew in from the north and recent rainstorms had left the ground damp. Leaving Elizabeth home with Sara—who indignantly demanded to know why her father and auntie were off somewhere after dark and was told that some friends needed help planning a party—Alan and I walked about two miles to the barn, which was to the north of Canterbury, past the river and across rolling fields of recently harvested wheat. The scent of freshly cut grain carried quite pleasantly on the cold air. We pulled our cloaks about us and didn’t need to light our lantern for a while, since the moon was full and the road was wide. A few riders passed us, including members of the Trained Band, but no one stopped us to ask where we were going. The war was over, and, though Alan thought we were walking at a very good pace, I could have made it all the way from Canterbury to London in the thirty minutes it took us to get from the cottage to the barn. But I made certain to match his much slower, normal pace.

  The barn was on the property of a farmer named Stone, a devout Catholic who’d had to stop practicing his faith openly, but who allowed Father Joel to hold Sunday services there for the Stone family and other Catholics. Accordingly, it was quite clean inside, with fresh straw strewn across the dirt floor and a thick bale of hay off to one side. I guessed that, on Sundays, Father Joel used that hay bale for an altar.

  Alan and I were the first to arrive, but soon afterward we saw flickers of small lanterns being carried by people making their way up the hill toward the barn. Father Joel had been right—it was easy to see anyone coming from any dir
ection. Many of the new arrivals were farmers, but to my surprise I also recognized some town craftsmen and a few shop owners. While I had expected twenty people, perhaps thirty at the most, almost sixty eventually arrived.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Layla,” my friend Melinda from the Sabine house whispered to me. “It’s just that my two chums Katie and Kenneth love Christmas so much, and I knew they would want to come.”

  “Do you trust them to keep our secret?” I asked, and when Melinda nodded, I greeted both her companions, who assured me they wanted to be part of any effort to save Christmas in England. And, like Melinda, it was obvious some of the other people Alan and Elizabeth and I invited had decided to recruit some of their Christmas-loving friends, too. Alan was worried because there were so many arrivals he didn’t know personally, but I took it as a good sign. People cared enough about Christmas to come out to a secret meeting on a cold fall night!

  Alan called the meeting to order, first suggesting that only a few lanterns remain lit: “We don’t want the Trained Band to receive a report that a local barn is on fire!” he joked. “Let me welcome you all, and thank you for coming. I’ll begin by emphasizing things I hope you already know. First, we must keep our activities secret. None of us want a visit from Blue Richard Culmer. Second, our purpose is to help save our beloved Christmas holiday by planning some activity, a protest, if you will, that will be so impressive in style and message that all the way back in London Parliament will realize it cannot take Christmas from us. Third, there is to be no violence of any sort. No matter what might be done to us, we will not raise our hands against anyone else. Are all here agreed?”

  There were murmurs of assent. Then Alan introduced me as “Layla, aunt of my beloved daughter and someone who has lived here among us for five years now. Though we may not have any official leader, I would suggest that she is the beating heart of this body. No one I have ever met loves Christmas more than Layla or understands better how the holiday can reflect the best in human spirit.”

  Then I talked for a little while, mostly about the Apprentice Protest in London, how brave it was, and how effective. I was not used to speaking to an audience and found it somewhat uncomfortable. My voice shook a little as I told about the look on Oliver Cromwell’s face as he realized there was stronger opposition to the abolition of Christmas than he and his Puritan supporters had ever imagined. I pointed out that the demonstrators had been easily dispersed because they had no real plan. If they had remained organized, no one could have made them stop protesting until they themselves decided they’d done enough.

  “If we do something similar here, it will only be effective if we act as one,” I pointed out. “Everyone must be agreed beforehand that we will stand together and not waver in any way. Mayor Sabine will certainly order us to go home, and he will threaten us with prison or even the possibility of direct musket-fire from the Trained Band. But if there are enough of us, nonviolent but defiant, all he can use against us are words. The mayor is not a stupid man. If a peaceful Christmas demonstration is marred by bloodshed caused by the Puritans, the whole country might well rise up against them, and Sabine can’t risk that.”

  “You say we need a thousand people involved, maybe more,” a gap-toothed farmer said. “How are we supposed to find them?”

  “In the same quiet way the first few invited here tonight took it upon themselves to invite others,” I replied. “All of you have friends you trust, and those friends will have friends, and so on. An abiding love of Christmas, and a determination not to lose that wonderful holiday, are the only qualifications necessary. Of course, the more people who know, the greater the danger that someone will be a spy for the mayor. Well, that’s a risk we must take.” As I spoke, I worried I wasn’t effectively communicating the urgency of our task, and what I was asked next proved me right.

  “Do we really need to do this?” an elderly woman wanted to know. “I miss singing carols in the streets, but last Christmas my family still enjoyed roast goose. We gave each other little gifts, and no one came to arrest us.”

  “The laws are stricter this year,” Alan pointed out. “Blue Richard and his gang are promising that, on December 25, they’ll break into homes where Christmas is being celebrated and drag everyone there off to jail. They might miss your home this time, but sooner or later it will be your turn. We’re not trying to save Christmas just in 1647. We’re trying to preserve it for the future. If we don’t act now, people will gradually decide that the Puritans really can take Christmas away, and if enough of them eventually accept this awful new law, then Christmas will be gone forever.”

  “And there’s even more danger to Christmas than that,” said another man, and my eyes widened and my heart leaped, because his face and voice were so familiar. Arthur, my friend of more than one thousand years, had come back to England!

  “Christmas has been gone from Scotland for sixty-four years, taken from the people by Scottish Parliament then and never restored since,” Arthur said, grinning as he looked toward me and saw I’d recognized him. “At first, the people there thought it would only be a matter of a year or two before their Puritan leaders came to their senses and let everyone choose whether or not to celebrate the holiday, but it never happened. Across the ocean in their American colonies, the Puritans have banned Christmas for more than twenty-five years. Now, if they succeed in banning Christmas in England, why, they may try the same thing in other countries until, finally, a December 25 will come where no one in the world will dare sing a carol or give a small gift in honor of the birth of Jesus. But we’re gathered here tonight. Let this be the moment when we decide this cannot, will not, happen. Let this be the moment when we agree that, no matter what the risk, we join together and take the first step to save Christmas forever.”

  I understood something then, listening to Arthur. Because we know them so well, we often take our family or friends for granted. We don’t appreciate them as much as they deserve. Now, after spending over a thousand years in Arthur’s company, I finally realized the extent of his ability to persuade people to act. Perhaps he had only been a war chief and never a magical king, but he was a great leader. He could put words together in a speech to inspire followers in a way I never could. When I talked about the Apprentice Protest, I made the people in the barn think about the possibility of a single demonstration in local streets. Arthur talked about saving Christmas for the whole world, and suddenly everyone understood all that was really at stake. It wasn’t just the holiday. It was the right of people to believe as they chose, rather than being told what they could and could not believe. By protecting Christmas, we would even be protecting the rights of those who didn’t want to celebrate it.

  Everyone cheered, and some began chanting, “This is the moment!” until Arthur finally raised his hands and asked them to stop “because we don’t need the sound of our voices reaching the mayor’s ears just yet!” But now there was a sense of excitement, of exhilaration, that hadn’t been there before. Arthur suggested that everyone think about how to recruit more supporters and that we meet back at the barn in two weeks. There was a roar of approval, and people slapped one another on the back and chattered happily as they began making their way home through the chilly, dark night.

  Arthur came over and hugged me. I introduced him to Alan as “a dear old friend of mine and my husband’s. I thought, though, he was living in Germany.”

  The two men shook hands, and Arthur said, “I’d heard such fine things about the countryside around Canterbury that I just had to come see for myself. I’m staying with a farm family, helping out with the chores, and when one of them told me about this meeting tonight I just thought I’d come with him, since I love Christmas so much. Layla, perhaps we can meet tomorrow evening and catch up with each other. I just had a letter from your husband Nicholas in America, and I’m sure you’ll want to read it.”

  Alan invited Arthur to join us tomorrow for dinner and gave him directions to the cottage. I hugged Arthur a
second time, and then walked home with Alan feeling completely elated. This is going to happen, I thought to myself. Christmas is really going to be saved.

  Arthur distributed candy canes and explained how they were to be used. When one of us needed to meet with everyone else, he or she would leave a small drawing of a candy cane stuffed in a crevice of the big tree outside the Hayes cottage.

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  Sara didn’t like strangers coming into her home. When Arthur arrived for dinner, she nodded stiffly in his direction, then resisted all his efforts to coax her into conversation. But Alan and Elizabeth warmed to my old friend quickly, so despite Sara’s shyness—which, I informed her afterward, bordered on rudeness—we shared a happy meal and pleasant talk. Arthur told about himself—that he was a native of England who’d been living in London, then moved abroad for a bit “because of political and religious discomfort” before returning to his homeland, since he missed it so much. By apparently telling everything, he was able to conceal his deepest secrets, specifically how he was about eleven hundred years old and an important member of Father Christmas’s gift-giving companions. Once again, I marveled at his amazing ability to draw people to him. After an hour of his company, I could tell Elizabeth and Alan would have followed Arthur anywhere. Only Sara didn’t seem captivated by him. As soon as dinner was over, she excused herself and climbed up to the loft.

  “I don’t think your young friend likes me,” Arthur commented when the dishes were cleared away and he and I had gone outside to walk a bit and talk. “Did I say or do something to offend her?”

  “That’s just Sara’s way,” I replied. “She is bashful around those she doesn’t know very well, but she must learn to be friendly and gracious even when she feels uncomfortable. I’ll speak to her about it. Now, last night you mentioned a letter from my husband. Did you bring it with you?”