The Autobiography of Santa Claus

by Jeff Guinn

  “It looks like dirt,” Attila said bluntly. “How can something like this burn with enough force to injure an enemy? What are you supposed to do, throw the powder on them, and then ask them to hold still while you build a fire to light it?”

  Marco Polo grinned; obviously, he was used to doubters. “The powder is collected in containers,” he explained. “The powder is packed in tightly and a twist of cloth or paper is forced into it, like a wick is used for a candle. This wick into the gunpowder is lit, and when the flame reaches the powder there is a loud explosion. The force of the explosion can be used to launch weapons at great speed and height.”

  “I can hardly believe it,” Attila said, so to prove his point Marco Polo fashioned a small paper tube, stuffed gunpowder and a wick into it, led us back into the street, motioned for passersby to move away, and lit the wick. The subsequent loud crack hurt my ears; there was quite a lot of smoke, too, which stung my eyes.

  “Are you now convinced?” Marco Polo asked, looking over his shoulder to the spot where Attila had been standing. But Attila wasn’t there any longer. Panicked by the exploding gunpowder, he’d dived under a nearby cart.

  Some of Marco Polo’s route of travel in China and other countries. He then returned to Venice.

  “I hate to think what terrible injuries that gunpowder will inflict on brave soldiers and innocent people,” Attila said sadly, after we’d helped him to his feet and brushed off the street dirt and straw that had stuck to his clothes.

  We spent several more days in Marco Polo’s company. He was an interesting person and told us many stories about China and the people who lived there. Felix thought we should ask Marco Polo to join us, and I almost did. But before I could make the suggestion, he told us he intended to stay in Venice and possibly fight for the city in a war he expected to occur between Venice and the neighboring city of Genoa.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” cautioned Francis, who remembered his own experiences in a war between Italian cities, but Marco Polo was determined to stay and fight. He ended up being captured and spent three years in a Genoa prison, where he wrote a book about his Chinese travels. The book was widely read. For the next five hundred years, it provided most of the information Europeans had about China, a country that rarely encouraged outsiders to come and visit.

  We never had a chance to speak with Marco Polo again, but we’d have many more experiences with gunpowder. Attila’s prediction was unfortunately correct. Almost immediately, nations outside of China began to use the new material in their wars. The earliest recorded instance was in 1304, when Arabs used gunpowder rammed into bamboo tubes to shoot arrows at enemies.

  I try eyeglasses for the first time

  Other inventions were more welcome. Eyeglasses first appeared in Italy in 1286. By 1300 they were being manufactured in Marco Polo’s home city of Venice. These eyeglasses used specially shaped lenses of glass, which were placed in frames and worn so that the lenses rested in front of each eye. If the shape of the lenses matched the weaknesses of the eye, the person wearing the eyeglasses could see much more clearly. Felix, Arthur, Francis, Attila, Dorothea, Layla, and I all tried on eyeglasses, and Felix and I were astonished to each find a pair that helped us see better. We purchased several pairs and carried them with us on our travels. The lenses of these glasses were convex, thicker in the middle than at the top and bottom. They helped us see things that were close up, such as writing on pages. Concave lenses, thinner in the middle than at top and bottom, were only invented a century later. These helped people see things better that were far away. And it was only in the late 1700s that a future friend of ours in America, a fellow named Ben Franklin, invented bifocal lenses, ones that were half for farsightedness and half for nearsightedness.

  It was about 1300 that a long period of about four hundred years called the Renaissance began. This was a very welcome time when people became more interested in art and music—things that enriched lives instead of threatening them. Painters and composers got some of the glory that previously belonged only to generals. To put it simply, the world started to become more civilized.

  This didn’t mean that things were perfect. Wars continued, and there still wasn’t much knowledge about medicine, which meant diseases could and did spread widely. How many people were fed still depended mostly on the weather—when seasons were moderate, farmers could grow plenty of crops. But let one winter be especially severe or a spring go by without enough rain, and starvation was always possible. From 1314 through 1317, there was a great famine. England, Ireland, and Poland were especially hard hit. Then in 1347, a terrible disease killed almost one-third of all the people in Europe; later on, in history books, this plague was called “The Black Death.”

  But, as with time itself, disease didn’t seem to touch us. We all remained healthy, and did everything we could to ease suffering when we found it—and we still found it everywhere.

  “The good that is happening will last longer than the bad things,” Layla said firmly. “At last, people are using some of their energy in positive ways. What’s the game that was just invented in Germany, and that we all played there? The one that was so enjoyable?”

  “Bowling,” Felix said. Bowling did seem like lots of fun. To play, ten wooden bottle-shaped pins were set up in a sort of triangle, and people would roll wooden balls and try to knock down as many of the pins as they could. It took a long time to play, however, mostly because setting the pins back up was a lot harder than knocking them down.

  “The greatest invention in history will be the one that picks up the bowling pins for the players,” Attila grumbled. “And I’m not saying that just because all of you beat me, either.”

  “You tried to roll the ball too hard,” Arthur said helpfully. “Bowling is a game of skill, not strength. You didn’t bowl well for the same reason your Huns never could defeat the Romans. You just went into battle without any real plan, and they thought things through before they fought.”

  “I didn’t notice your British tribes doing any better against the Saxons,” Attila shot back. “Don’t tell me about fighting, and don’t tell me about bowling, either.” He and Arthur glared at each other.

  “It’s ridiculous for you two to argue about a friendly game of bowling, let alone battles that occurred almost a thousand years ago,” I said. “Instead, why don’t we think about making miniature bowling games to give to children? Arthur, you figure out a way to make the small wooden balls, and, Attila, you decide how we should carve the pins.” It was always a simple thing to make them stop arguing. Like the rest of us, they enjoyed making and giving gifts more than anything else.

  The 1350s saw widespread use of another relatively new invention, and one that would become part of our legend. One night in France, Felix and I crept into a small country village with several sacks of toys we meant to distribute to the children who lived there—maybe fifty children in all, living in two dozen cottages. We’d never been to this village, but Layla and Dorothea had visited the day before. They’d told us how many children lived there and how many presents we should pack for our gift-giving.

  Felix and I quietly approached the village, taking care not to wake up the many dogs sleeping nearby. Interestingly, dogs rarely bothered us, anyway. They always seemed to sense we came for a good purpose, not to rob or otherwise hurt anyone they loved. We neared the first cottage; I was reaching into my sack for two wooden tops. Layla had said two young brothers lived there. As I took out the tops, Felix suddenly hissed, “What’s that?”

  A family’s stockings hanging by the fireplace

  “Where?” I asked, worried someone had seen us.

  “That, that—well, that thing on the side of the cottage!” Felix spluttered. I looked where he was pointing, and there attached to one outer wall was a squarish-looking stone structure tall enough to stick above the roof. Little swirls of woodsmoke were coming out of the top of it.

  After a few moments of thought, I whispered, “That must be
one of those newfangled chimneys we’ve been hearing about. You know, with fires built in the bottom of them to provide homes with light and warmth. That part is known as the fireplace. Then the smoke from the fire comes out the top of the chimney and doesn’t settle back inside the house.”

  “Amazing,” Felix answered. We both stood looking in wonder at this chimney. Then he added, “Well, let’s go inside.”

  We rarely had any trouble getting into a house or cottage. Fancy locks for doors hadn’t been invented yet. Later on, when they were, Attila proved masterful at teaching the rest of us how to open them. So Felix and I easily opened the wooden door of the cottage and slipped inside.

  As with most cottages in small European villages of this time, there was only one large room. Seven people were sleeping in it, apparently the two parents, the two children, a grandmother and a grandfather and an aunt. Often lots of relatives lived together, for shelter was scarce. We quickly identified the straw bedding where the two boys slept, but before we left our gifts beside them we found ourselves drawn back to the marvelous fireplace. A tiny blaze burned at the bottom of it.

  “Look at how the smoke is drawn straight up,” Felix muttered. “If you weren’t so wide in the middle, you could get into houses just by getting on the roof and jumping down the chimneys.”

  It was rare that we ever talked while inside a house, for fear of waking someone up, but I couldn’t let this insult pass.

  “You’re quite wide yourself, my friend, so don’t mock my waistline,” I said. “Besides, if I jumped down the chimney I’d burn my feet on the fire when I landed! Still, you’ve given me an idea. Look, for instance, at how the whole family’s stockings have been hung up by the front of the fireplace to dry in front of the flames while everyone sleeps. Remember my story of leaving my first gifts ever in the stockings of Shem’s daughters? Let’s leave these toys in the stockings of the boys. They won’t burn—the fire isn’t that large or hot—and in the morning maybe the family will think the mysterious gift-giver came down the chimney, just as you suggested!”

  So we put toys in the stockings and hurried on to the next cottage, and the next, and the next, and the next. In each one with a chimney we found stockings drying in front of the fire, and we always left our gifts in the smaller stockings worn by the children.

  After sunup, Felix and I made a point of going back to the village and listening to the excited gossip there. Everyone was talking about how all the children had found toys in their stockings that morning, and how whoever had left the toys must have come down the chimneys without being burned by the flames in the fireplaces.

  “Surely whoever gave these gifts must have great magical powers!” declared one elderly woman, and everyone around her nodded in agreement. Felix and I grinned and hurried back to our camp to tell the tale to the others. Forever afterward, in houses with chimneys, we always left our gifts in stockings by fireplaces, if the children in those families had left their stockings hanging there.

  To everyone’s joy, Attila and Dorothea met and hired perhaps the finest craftsman who ever lived—Willie Skokan, a short, wiry fellow who could take a sharp knife, a bit of wood, some string and paint, and literally create any toy imaginable.

  FIFTEEN

  At Court with Columbus

  Until about 1400, our group of seven traveled everywhere together. Felix, Arthur, Attila, Dorothea, Francis, Layla, and I were good, close friends. But as the world changed, the way we did things had to change, too. We began to feel the frustration of not being able to be in enough places at once. Since we were always going someplace or another, there was never any opportunity to settle in one spot for a while and concentrate only on making toys of the highest quality. This especially frustrated Arthur and Attila, who were by far the finest craftsmen among us, better even than Felix, who himself was much better than me. At the same time, Layla and Dorothea constantly suggested we try to make some specific toys for girls, as well. They felt tops and the like were mostly favorites of boys.

  Finally, Arthur and Attila came to me with a suggestion: For the first time, they said, the group should divide, with some of us traveling and gift-giving, and the others remaining in one place to concentrate on crafting as many fine toys as possible.

  “And the ones who travel can be constantly on the lookout for new places where gifts should be given,” Arthur said. “That’s obviously the role for you, Nicholas, and for Francis and Felix and Layla. You’re the ones who really enjoy the traveling. As for me, I’m never entirely happy unless I’m in England, and Attila longs to remain in Germany, and Dorothea wants to be there with him. So let us go to the places where we love to be the most, and once there we’ll do what we love doing the most, which is making toys.”

  It was soon agreed. Arthur would set up toy-making operations in London, and Attila and Dorothea in the German city of Nuremberg. Quietly, they’d acquire property and build workshops, then recruit the finest craftsmen they could find. Half the toys manufactured in the workshops would be sold in city markets to raise the money necessary to pay the workers’ salaries and buy materials. The other half would be turned over to those of us continuing the gift-giving.

  Felix and Francis went to Germany with Attila and Dorothea to help get everything started in Nuremberg. Layla and I accompanied Arthur to London, and a very unhappy place we found it. The London streets were filthy; people threw garbage everywhere. England was involved in ongoing wars with France and also in its own civil wars, with rival families taking turns claiming the English throne.

  “How can you be happy here, with so much fighting going on?” Layla asked Arthur.

  He shrugged. “It’s my home,” he said simply. Almost one thousand years after he’d given up fighting the Saxons to join us, Arthur still had the force of character necessary to be a good leader. He quickly found a dozen fine craftsmen to come to work in the new toy factory, men and women skilled in carving and sewing and painting. They were delighted to have a chance to earn their livings in such a happy way.

  Arthur’s toy factory was operating within six months, and Attila’s in Nuremberg opened a few weeks after that. Felix, Francis, Layla, and I—who were left to do the traveling and gift-giving—missed being with our good friends very much. But there was comfort in knowing they were happy to be in permanent homes, and a few times every year we’d go to one toy factory or the other to replenish our supply of gifts, and then we’d have happy reunions with them.

  Layla took special pride in Dorothea’s role at the Nuremberg toy factory. Dorothea insisted on hiring several special German craftsmen herself and having them do nothing but create wonderful wooden dolls. Nobody knew for certain where the word “doll” came from, although Dorothea always believed it was based on the German word “tocke,” which literally means a small block of wood. This is what dolls were carved from in those days.

  To everyone’s joy, Attila and Dorothea met and hired perhaps the finest craftsman who ever lived—Willie Skokan, a short wiry fellow who could take a sharp knife, a bit of wood, some string and paint, and literally create any toy imaginable. It became Willie’s job not only to make toys, but to invent them. Some of his first inventions in Nuremberg were small wooden models of Noah’s Ark, complete with tiny animal figures to move in and out of the boat; toy musical instruments, flutes and recorders that children could blow into and compose tunes; wooden puppets, marvelously jointed and able to do all sorts of tricks for those who pulled their strings; dollhouses for dolls to live in; and, finally, toy weapons, blunt-edged wooden swords and bow and arrows.

  These last toys worried the rest of us. We wanted children to play with the gifts we gave so they’d forget the bad things in life, not pretend to be doing the bad things themselves. But Willie, in his unique, halting way, explained why he thought someday children would no longer find toy weapons interesting.

  Willie Skokan

  “Children follow the examples of their parents,” he told Layla and me one night at his cottage
in Nuremberg as we ate a plain dinner of toasted bread and cheese. Willie could build elaborate toys, but his personal tastes were always quite simple. Once, when asked his philosophy of life, he replied, “Moderation in all things.” At dinner we debated whether war toys were appropriate for gift-giving. “There’s a lot of fighting in this world, and when children play they often reflect real life,” Willie said.

  “But if they didn’t have toys that reminded them of violence, maybe they wouldn’t grow up to be violent themselves,” Layla argued.

  Willie looked thoughtful and took a moment before replying. “What we should do is hope that grown-ups learn to set better examples. When they give up their instruments of war, children will no longer want toy weapons.” And from that time we kept making and giving pretend swords and bows, and later toy guns and rifles, to the children who wanted them.

  The 1400s had other moments of special significance, and as usual some were better than others. Besides the wars, the saddest time for me was in 1444, which was when the ship fleet of Henry the Navigator began to bring captured African natives to Portugal, where these innocent African men and women were sold as slaves in the marketplace. In previous history, and in the centuries yet to come, there had been and would be nothing more disgusting than some human beings believing they had the right to own others. We made special efforts to bring gifts to slave children, but this was often quite difficult. Slaveowners guarded their so-called “human property” all through the night hours to be sure none of them escaped. Only rarely could we elude detection by these guards and get into slave quarters to leave our presents.

  Some of Willie Skokan’s toys

  In the later 1400s, Francis had the urge to spend time in the Western European kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, which eventually would be combined into the nation of Spain. These lands were, in many ways, the cultural and political centers of Europe. It was important that we knew everything happening there. So, while Felix, Layla, and I concentrated on central Europe and England, Francis spent several years getting to know Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Aragon and Castile. Eventually in the spring of 1492, Francis wrote to me in care of Attila’s Nuremberg toy factory, asking my permission to tell the king and queen about us and our mission. Isabella in particular, Francis said, might be persuaded to give us financial help in much the same way that Charlemagne had nearly seven hundred years earlier.