I looked up to Grandpa's tough leathered face and he smiled gently. “They'll be back,” he whispered, and I couldn't help returning his smile. In a way, I knew he was right. He had run the Christmas tree lot on that corner for nearly ten years, and when one person left, another always arrived. Grandpa offered me a sip of his black coffee and I shook my head in embarrassment; coffee was not for little girls.
My mother had dropped me off for the day while she ran errands. I didn't mind, though, my grandfather was a little bit of magic — especially around this time of year. I knew if I helped him, he was sure to put in a good word for me with Santa.
I sat patiently, my hands folded in my lap, breathing in the smell of freshly cut trees. He looked down at me and smiled again as he opened his paper. His eyes caught a small article about the boom in the sale of artificial trees that year, and his eyes sagged. I looked up at his white beard and hair and laughed. To me, Grandpa always looked like he belonged to the winter. I reached up and tugged on his whiskers. As I knew he would, he gave a rich belly laugh in return.
“Grandpa … can I —” He nodded before I could finish and I rushed out of the chair. I ran through the trees, my imagination taking control. I was running through the forest as wild wolves nipped eagerly at my heels. I turned a sharp corner and barely escaped with my life. I laughed as my little legs moved as quickly as they could.
Then, my imagination turned me into an elf, and I had to inspect every tree to make sure it was worthy enough to go home with a family. I ruffled my fingers through the prickly needles with ease as I pulled one off and held it to my nose. It smelled fresh and wild, new and alive — like me. I dropped the small needle, letting it fall carelessly to the dirt and gravel. As I rounded a corner, I caught sight of another car pulling into the lot. I ran to my grandfather quickly, nearly tumbling headfirst into the few trees.
When I arrived at Grandpa's side, a small tailwind of dirt followed me, dying beneath my small feet. I quickly hopped onto the seat beside him, my chest heaving and my legs throbbing in the cold. I looked up to his face and then into the lot. This car also was just turning around. My head sank as I watched the car disappear down the road. Who didn't want a tree in the desert; they were so rare? Grandpa patted my small head as I turned my saddened gaze to his.
“They'll be back,” he whispered again, and for a moment, I caught the uncertainty in his voice. I looked at his hands as they trembled with age, his breath heaving wearily out of his chest. I wanted to scream at the cars that passed, to stop them from making a terrible mistake. Couldn't they see that this lot, that this grandpa, was magic? They lived in a desert and they were passing up the chance to find their worth in winter.
I watched Grandpa as the day moved on, slowly. More cars turned and left the small piece of Christmas behind them. Eventually, my mother pulled in and parked just inches before the small opening in the fence. She walked in and I ran to her. I hugged her legs tightly, as if they were breath, as if they were life. She laughed and patted me on the head as she made her way to her father.
“How are they biting this year, Dad?” she asked with a laugh, as she wrapped her arms around his small frame. He looked at me and winked as he stood and returned her embrace.
“Oh, we've been busy all day, and why not, people always need Christmas trees.”
With his words, I understood what his wink had meant. I shook my head and kicked the dirt, not sure of what to say as we made our way to Mom's car and climbed in. Grandpa and I waved slowly, sharing the last of the day with one another. Then Mom turned the car around and we drove off, leaving Grandpa in the dirt with his trees.
That special time with Grandpa was destined to be one of our last times together at the tree lot. I think back on his blue eyes, his white beard and hair, and I don't feel the chill of winter at all. Instead, warmth radiates in my chest.
I still visit the old lot, even though it's empty now. I still imagine the wolves are chasing me, and I need to inspect every tree to make sure they're worthy of the little children that will camp around them. Sometimes I even imagine pulling a needle from one of their long branches and holding it to my nose, but not to smell the tree; I do it to breathe in my grandfather, and all of the love he brought with him to give out to the people who stopped and stayed for a while.
I think about what he was really offering out there on that small lot. I think about how I miss him, as well as all of the friends and family I've lost over the years. I know now that his words were true, “They'll be back.” One day, I will see him again. Somewhere past winter and beyond spring, we'll all find each other, and when we do, we'll all come back to Christmas.
Finding Santa
BY DEBRA J. RANKIN
It had been one of those dreary winter days when kids are home from school for Christmas break. Bored with entertaining my two-year-old brother, Stevie, I went looking for my older brother, Kenny, who had told me the other day that there was no Santa. Kenny didn't like me hanging around all the time. He was good at hiding from me, but I was even better at finding him.
Wandering into the kitchen, I noticed the basement door was slightly ajar. We hadn't lived in this big old house very long and I had never been in the basement before. I pushed timidly at the door. It creaked open and cool damp air touched my face. I squinted into the darkness. Shadows moved across the steps. The wooden stairs weren't welcoming, and the floor at the bottom was hardly visible. No noise came from the basement. Why would Kenny be down there?
I held the railing with both hands and started to sneak down the stairs, sliding my hands along the railing as I moved. I heard a scuffling sound and hesitated as the furnace rumbled to life. I shuddered and gripped the railing tighter. I didn't dare call out to Kenny; it would be just like him to hide and then jump out and scare me. Instead, I waited quietly until the furnace settled down.
Halfway down the stairs, I saw the gray cinderblock walls and gray floor that seemed to suck the light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I stepped onto the cold cement floor in my stocking feet and shivered.
My brother was balancing on a Big Tonka truck with his back to me, at the workbench. He was so engrossed in whatever he was doing, that he looked like Frankenstein in his laboratory.
I tiptoed closer. “What ya doin' down here?” I asked.
Kenny jumped at the sound of my voice. Then he spun around and leapt off the truck. With outstretched arms, he moved toward me.
“Get out of here!” he shouted. “You can't come down here!”
Startled, I took one step backward and tilted my head up to look him in the eye. Kenny blocked my view of the workbench with his arms, so I tried to duck beneath them, but he was too quick for me.
“Get out of here!” he shouted again.
I frowned. “What ya doin' down here?”
Kenny grabbed me and tried to push me toward the stairs.
“It's a secret.”
I loved it when Kenny had secrets — it usually meant he wasn't supposed to be doing what he was doing.
I tried to wiggle free of his grip.
“No!” he shouted. “Go back upstairs!”
I knew if I left I would never find out what Kenny was doing, so I stood with my feet frozen to the floor like, little Cindy-Lou Who staring down the Grinch.
Finally, he relented. “You gotta promise you won't tell anybody — even Mom.”
“Okay. I promise.”
Kenny leaned toward me and whispered, “Come here, I'll show you.” I stepped up on the Tonka Truck and gazed at the workbench.
“Wow!” I breathed.
Sitting on the workbench was Kenny's old wooden train set, a glass of water, and a set of water colors. It looked just like Santa's workshop! Kenny had carefully sanded the cars and was adding matching paint to the chipped areas.
“I'm fixing it up nice for Stevie. For Christmas,” he explained.
Kenny didn't need to say anything else. He was thinking of someone besides himself! He was
fixing up his well-loved train set to give to our little brother for Christmas. My big brother — the one who told me there was no Santa — was working very hard at being Santa, and that made me smile.
The Baby Jesus Bed
BY KATHLEEN M. MULDOON
“Hurry, Gran,” I urged, as my grandmother followed me off the rickety elevator and into the basement of our apartment building.
It was the first Sunday in Advent and time to retrieve the Baby Jesus bed from our storage bin. I'd always felt unsafe in the musty cellar, but today, now that I was ten, I felt braver as we wound through the maze of chicken-wire enclosures that held the tenants' surplus belongings. Finally, we reached the bin marked 8B.
As Gran turned the key in the padlock, I noticed something strange. A hole had been cut in the chicken wire on one side of our bin, and it looked as though stuff had been pulled from some of our boxes. I pointed it out to Gran.
“Why, honey, we've got nothing anyone would want,” Gran said.
She grunted as she pulled open the warped doorframe and we stepped inside. It soon became apparent that someone had at least thought they wanted our stuff, because sure enough, several items were missing. Among them was the cardboard box that held our meager Christmas decorations, including the miniature wooden manger I called the Baby Jesus bed.
The first Christmas I remember seeing it was in 1952, the year I turned five. Gran had brought it and a Jesus figurine with her from Ireland when she'd immigrated to the United States during the Great Depression. As had been her family tradition, she taught me that the amount of straw that would fill the little manger depended on my behavior during Advent. My good deeds and good school grades earned ten pieces of straw each, which I placed in the manger every night. On Christmas Eve, I solemnly placed the Infant statue atop the straw. Some Christmases, I'm sorry to say, Jesus had a mighty slim mattress.
“Look!” Gran cried.
On the floor, where the ornament box had been stored, was the statue of the infant Jesus. The fall had broken off one leg, which lay beside it.
“It's a miracle,” Gran whispered as she reached down reverently to pick up the statue. “It must have fallen out of the box when the thief pulled it through the hole.”
Cradling the Baby Jesus in her apron, we rode the elevator back up to our flat. Gran seemed delighted to have found the statue, but I was furious. How dare someone steal our box? More importantly, where would the Infant lay His head? I felt as though our whole Christmas was ruined. Not only had the thieves stolen Jesus's bed, our Christmas ornament box had also held the bag of straw we used every year.
After Gran glued the statue back together and put it on a towel to dry, she emptied the cardboard box that held wooden matches to light the burners on our stove.
“This will do for our manger,” she said.
“But what about the straw?” I whined.
Gran grabbed shears and trimmed pieces of straw from our whisk broom and handed them to me.
“These will do,” she said.
Suddenly, I couldn't hold back my tears. The pretty Baby Jesus bed had been made by my great-grandfather. I'd never met him, but Gran had often told me the story of how he whittled it himself. The matchbox with “Diamond” printed on the side hardly seemed a suitable replacement for Jesus.
Gran hugged me. “Hush now, you know it upsets your mother when you cry.”
I looked at my mother, sitting in the same chair she always sat in. She looked like a statue herself, her eyes vacant and staring. I'd never known her to be well. She was just “Mom,” who Gran and I dressed, fed, and led to her chair each day. I almost wished my crying would upset her so she'd seem more like a real person to me.
Angrily, I swiped at my tears and leaped up. “I'm going to write a letter,” I announced. “I'm going to ask the thief to bring back the Baby Jesus bed.”
Gran shook her head. “Folks who steal don't care about making things right,” she said.
But I wrote my letter anyway. I don't remember the exact words I printed on that paper, but I remember how I addressed it. “To the person who stole the Christmas box from 8B.” In a sentence or two, I explained about the Baby Jesus bed and how important it was for our Christmas. Then I got the building manager to let me tape my letter by the mailboxes in the lobby.
Slowly, the days of Advent passed. Each night, I dutifully placed my pieces of straw in the matchbox, but my heart wasn't in it. I tried to sound cheerful when I read our Christmas cards to Mom, but the loss of the Jesus bed had changed the way I looked at the holiday. Gran, too, was only going through the motions as she baked her shamrock cookies for neighbors, the mailman, and the milkman. This Christmas just wasn't the same without our Baby Jesus bed in the center of the kitchen table, awaiting the reception of the statue on Christmas Eve.
By the time Christmas approached, the matchbox was bursting with straw. On the night before Christmas, Gran pre pared our usual Christmas Eve soup, and the smell of gingerbread filled our apartment. I had just led Mom to the kitchen table when I thought I heard something brush against our apartment door. Gran heard it, too.
“Go and see,” she said. “Don't take the chain off, though.”
I went to the door, stood on my tiptoes, and peered through the peephole. I didn't see anyone in the hallway. Cautiously, I opened the door as much as the security chain allowed. I still didn't see anyone. I was about to close the door when I noticed a paper sack on the floor. It had “8B” written on it in pencil. I grabbed it and pulled it inside.
“It's for us!” I said. “Should I look inside?”
“Better let me,” Gran said as she pinned a towel around Mom's neck.
Gran took off the tape that held the bag shut and gasped. With a shaking hand, she pulled out our Baby Jesus bed! A tear trickled down her face. Even Mom seemed to notice that something very special was happening. Gran searched further in the bag and found a piece of paper. It was the note I'd taped to the wall downstairs. On it, someone had written the words “I'M SORRY.”
After we ate supper, Gran helped me transfer the straw from the matchbox to the little wooden manger. After I had lifted the Baby Jesus statue and carefully placed it on the straw, Gran, Mom, and I held hands. Gran offered a prayer of thanksgiving, both for the birth of our Savior and for the return of the manger, that, for us, symbolized His coming. When I opened my eyes again, I saw a tiny smile on Mom's face. Happiness from that little smile spilled from her into me, and I knew this would be the best Christmas of my life. And it was.
Through the Innocence of Childhood
BY BARBARA JEANNE FISHER
The trouble with some of us is that we have been inoculated with small doses of commercialized Christmas, with presents and Santa and monetary treasures, and that keeps us from catching the “real thing.” Perhaps I was even a little bit that way, until one winter evening, when my husband and I decided to take our grandchildren down to our cabin in the woods for an evening of preseason fun together.
Sitting on a giant rug, surrounded by children, I read them the traditional story of Christmas. I told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. I explained to them that finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where Baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children sat in amazement, trying to grasp every word.
When I finished reading the story, the children asked questions while we drank hot chocolate and ate frosted Christmas cookies. When they finished eating, I gave them each several pieces of construction material to make a crude manger. I instructed them to think about Baby Jesus and the first Christmas, and make a nativity scene from the items they were given.
The children were so creative! Following my simple instructions, they began tearing the paper and carefully laying strips of it in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel were used as a blanket for Baby Jesus. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt.
All went well, until I got to the table where little six-year-old Brianna sat.
I knew she was going through a hard time understanding life and the harshness that oftentimes accompanies it, because several times she had mentioned her friend Brian's sadness over his parent's divorce. She talked of little else these days. Today, as I looked at her sweet innocent face, I saw the sadness still mirrored there.
Looking down at the table, I was surprised to see two infants in the manger.
“Does Jesus have a friend in the manager with Him today?” I asked.
Crossing her little arms stubbornly, Brianna looked at her completed manger scene and very seriously began to explain. For such a young child, who had only heard the Christmas story a few times, she related the happenings accurately — until she came to the part where Mary put Baby Jesus in the manger. Then Brianna started to ad lib. She made up her own ending to the story.
“… and when Mary laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at my friend Brian, and asked him if he had a place to stay,” Brianna explained carefully. “He told Jesus that his mommy and daddy had just gotten a divorce and were fighting over who would get to keep him, and so he didn't have any place to live. Then Jesus told Brian that he could stay with Him. But he told Jesus that he couldn't, because he didn't have a gift to give Him like everybody else did.
“Brian wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so he thought and thought about what he could use for a gift. He knew it was cold in the manger, so he figured if maybe he could keep Jesus warm, then that would be a good gift.
“Brian said, ‘If I lay real close to you so you are not cold, will that be a good enough gift?’
“Jesus smiled. He said, ‘If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.’ So, Brian climbed up into the manger and cuddled close to Jesus, who told him he could stay with Him — for always.”
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