Santa Claus

A Holiday Journey 21

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Chris had to sit down.  He sat on the front pew, then moved over to give Santa room to sit.  He looked at his hands and sat in silence for what felt like a long time, though it was actually not long at all.

“You are asking me if I want to take over being Santa?” Chris asked.  “For the next two hundred years?”

“Eleven o’clock,” Santa said, and nodded, and pointed at the stained-glass window at the front of the church.  He sat beside Chris and continued.  “I apologize. Given the modern mass media, the image and traditions of Santa have been pretty well set in stone.  You probably won’t have much ability to shift things, at least at first.  But Santa needs some new blood.  Traditions can grow stale.  The first shepherd, Joel, said he soon realized different people would develop different traditions and celebrations, but he said that was a good thing.  When the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches split, Sinterklaas made it work—even when the Romans tried to drag the celebration back to December sixth, he made it work.  As long as the Christ child remained the reason for the season, as they say.”

“That idea has struggled of late,” Chris said.

“You can read about it in the Christmas book,” Santa said, and pointed to a big, open book on a stand, up front, opposite the podium.  “My predecessors have long speculated whether at twelve o’clock there will be a twelfth Santa, or if that may be when the Christ returns.” Santa shrugged.  “I’m sorry I won’t be here to see it, but you can tell me how it turns out when you get there… So?”

“Well… I lost my job.  I lost my apartment.  I would have lost Lilly if she hadn’t been kidnapped… Times being what they are… Yes,” Chris said.  “But I hope I don’t screw it up.”

Santa patted Chris on the shoulder.  “Just do your best.  In the end, that is all that any of us can do.”  He paused, and they both looked up.

A light appeared around the altar, and grew until Chris and Santa could not keep their eyes open.  Both men trembled in the presence of what was holy.  The light soon settled into the image of a person, but that felt worse in a way.  That person was not only holy, that person was also pure and good in a way no human could be.

“It is settled.” the Christmas Angel said, but kindly made it sound like a question.

“Yes,” Santa stood.

“Good,” the Christmas Angel said, and appeared to smile.  A woman called.

“Santa. Victor.”

“Coming, dear,” Santa responded, as a ghostly image of an old woman appeared to come to the edge of the light.  Santa did not hesitate to step into the light, and as he did, both his and her images faded until they disappeared altogether.

Chris lowered his head, and the angel spoke again.  “Tell me.”

“Lord,” Chris began, and found some tears in his eyes.  They were tears for his hard life, his family that went before him, for all of the people around the world that still lived without hope.  He thought one good day per year was not too much to ask.  One day where people remembered the Lord and did good for one another would be the least the fallen human race could do.  “I don’t think I can do this alone,” Chris said.  “I need Merry, and Lilly, and all the others.”

Chris did not see the angel smile ever so slightly as the angel vanished once again in the light.  Chris just sat on the pew, and felt all the love, joy, and peace rush into his heart. Then he did cry.

 

Cue: White Christmas

A Holiday Journey, The London Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Don Jackson.  Ó℗CD Guy Music Inc., 2001

 

The front door flew open when the angel fully vanished.  Chris wiped his eyes as he heard a voice shout, “Uncle Chris!” He turned and saw Merry, who ran, but stopped a few feet away.  Plum and Roy stayed in the door, but removed their hats.  He saw a fairy land beside Merry, and change from a little, fluttering person, to a fully adult woman, more beautiful than an ordinary human woman ought to be.  And he felt something like a little bug, hugging his cheek and nose.

“Woah,” Chris said.  He had to be careful, but he grabbed the fairy around her legs and gently pulled her off his face.

“Lilly,” the fairy woman spoke.  “You need to come here and get big so your Uncle Chris can see you.”

“Yes mother,” Lilly said, and she did that very thing, and smiled briefly at Merry, who smiled right back at her.

Chris looked at Lilly, furrowed his brow and frowned a bit, but everyone could see the love in that frown.  “You ran away without telling me,” he said, gruffly.

“Uncle Chris…” Lilly did not know what to say, but Merry stepped forward and cut off her childish excuses.

“My fault,” Merry confessed.  “She is a half-fairy, a half Christmas fairy.”  Merry looked at Chris with big, sad eyes.  “Lilly was suffocating in the entirely human world, cut off from the magic that flows in her blood.  That was why she got sick, and especially bad in the Christmas season.  She is very young, and ageing more like a fairy, too. She is nearly seven, but measures small; more like a four-year-old…”  Merry let her voice trail off as she realized she was making excuses, herself.

Chris dropped to one knee and held open his arms to his little girl.  “Merry Christmas,” he said, and Lilly rushed into his hug. She returned his Merry Christmas.

Chris stood, took Lilly’s hand, and stepped up to Serissa, who did not know what to expect, but finally lowered her eyes.  Chris just smiled all the more.  He caught Serissa in a hug and repeated, “Merry Christmas,” and added, “Sister.”

Serissa found some happy tears and returned, “Merry Christmas.”

As Chris stepped back, he said, “Saying the words is right and good, but I think people should give Christmas hugs, too.”  He looked at Roy and Plum.

Roy leaned over and hugged Plum, and said, “Merry Christmas.”

“Same,” Plum said, and returned the hug, briefly, before he pulled back, brushed off his coat like restoring his dignity, and said, “We have some special deliveries tonight, it being actual Christmas Eve.  There are not many, but they are the hard and dangerous ones Santa always insisted on handling.  I don’t know what you want to do.” Plum struggled hard to hold his tongue after that.

Chris nodded, but said, “First things first.”  He turned to Merry.

“I have been made human,” Merry said, and added, “It is different.”

“You don’t mind not being an elf anymore?” Chris asked.

Merry shook her head and lowered her eyes like Serissa.  “It is what I prayed for.”

“Good,” Chris said in a voice straight and clear, without the least hint of what he might be thinking.  He came out with it.  “Will you marry me, Merry?”

“Yes,” she said, dropped one tear, and looked up at him in time to be wrapped up in his arms.  Chris kissed her, and she returned everything in her heart.  They would say Merry Christmas in a minute, or perhaps a few minutes.

 

Cue: closing credits …

Cue: Here We Come a Wassailing

A Holiday Journey, The London Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Don Jackson.  Ó℗CD Guy Music Inc., 2001

 

END

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MONDAY

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

 

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A Holiday Journey 20

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

*

Cue: Carol of the Bells

A Holiday Journey, The London Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Don Jackson.  Ó℗CD Guy Music Inc., 2001

 

“Christopher Shepherd,” Santa said Chris’ name as he slowly rose and walked down the center aisle.  “And you have seen the window.”

“Yes.” Chris did not know what to say. “Santa?” he repeated, and the old man nodded as he took Chris’ arm and gently led him to the altar.

“You can see the window better from here,” Santa said, and he turned his attention to point at the morning sun that streamed through the stained glass. “But, you see, there have been ten Santas since the birth of our Lord and Savior.”

“Ten Santas?”  Chris saw the window neatly divided into twelve slots, so it looked like a clock. Ten of those slots had pictures of people.  The eleven o’clock and twelve o’clock slots remained plain glass.

“Well, they haven’t all been called Santa, you know.  Let’s see.  I first met Kris on a trip to New York.  Mine was a merchant family, out of eastern Pennsylvania.  Christmas Eve, 1806, or 7… maybe 1805.  It was a long time ago.  Anyway, I explained the quaint Dutch traditions associated with Christmas to a young fellow by the name of Irving—that was his last name. Washington Irving.  I met him again in England about ten years later…” He waved off that train of thought and pointed again at the window.

“The first, the one o’clock picture, shows the first shepherd.  He was over sixty when the Lord was born.  A remarkable thing, to be so old in that day and time. He was out watching his sheep at night, and so on, you know, and the angel came to him, the Christmas angel. He filled Joel—that was his name—with the Spirit of Christmas on that night.  Love, joy, peace, generosity, celebration, and all.”

“Joel was a shepherd?”

Santa nodded.  “The first Christmas shepherd.”

“The first Santa?”

Santa nodded again.  “From that day, wherever Joel went, the Spirit of Christmas went with him and touched so many lives.  He was there when the church started.  He went with the apostles to Greece. He eventually made it to Rome, where he picked up a young man to help him in his journey.  He cut through Gaul and went into the Germanys where the J of his name got pronounced like a Y.

“Yoel?”

“Yule, as it came to be called.  He got burned at the stake.  That happened around 140. You see, in bearing the Spirit of Christmas, he ended up living over two hundred years, kind of like Abraham, I guess.  But before he died, he passed on the Spirit of Christmas to his young Latin friend.  You see? Two o’clock.”

Santa pointed again, and Chris kept his eyes on the clock window.

“That young Roman considered what it meant to carry the Spirit of new birth, the celebration of the Lord’s birth.  In the Latin, it would be the name Natalis, but in Gaul, he compressed the idea and came up with Noel, in honor of his mentor, Joel.  Pater Noel, actually, once he got a few years on him and grew his beard, which turned white enough.  He carried the Spirit of Christmas for two hundred and four years before he passed it on to the original Saint Nikolas, back in the Middle East.  That was in 343.”

Chris shook his head.  “I read about Saint Nicholas.  He died in 343.”

“Natural causes,” Santa said, and nodded with a small smile.  “There is a book that chronicles all of this. You can read about it, later.  He did not actually die, in fact, he took the job, and kept it well enough to put his imprint on the whole enterprise, at least the name Nicholas.  After two hundred years, when he was actually two hundred and seventy something, he came across a half-frozen man and his daughter in the Slavic wilderness.  He gave the man the Spirit of Christmas and took his place in freezing to death.”

“Four o’clock,” Chris pointed.  “I was wondering who the girl was.”

“Snowflake.  Still an important part of Slavic and Russian Orthodox celebrations.”

“Did she carry the Spirit as well?” Chris asked.

Santa did not exactly answer.  “Honestly, as the faith and Christmas celebrations spread, the job became too much for one person.  Ded Moraz was his name, and he chose to live in the far, frosted north.”

“The North Pole?”

“Well…near enough.  He was the first to enlist the elves to the task.  That happened in the Scandinavian north, the land of the reindeer.”

Chris nodded, but he had a serious question.  “And that demon at five o’clock?”  He thought of Courtney.

“Another Nicholas, as he took the name.  Krampus was his demon.  From roughly 750 to 960.  Each bearer of the Spirit of Christmas serves about two hundred years.  Each Santa, if you will, from that point on, also had a demon of some sort to follows them around.  They frighten the naughty children, but you know, though they are powerless in Santa’s presence.  Kris said it kept him human, and I don’t disagree.  It is remarkable what Santa can do.  Faithfulness, humility and self-control are probably the most important traits to hold on to.”

“I can see that,” Chris said.  Santa paused to look in Chris’ eyes.  He said nothing, but after a moment he nodded and went back to the window.

“Six o’clock is the Dutchman, Sinterklaas, and his servant, Zwarte Piet. Servant, not slave, is the best way to refer to that.  Those were the dark ages, from about 960 to 1171.  In those days, the Roman Church tried to disconnect the celebration from the birth of the Lord and drag it back to December sixth, the supposed death day of the first Nikolas.  I don’t know what demon in Rome suggested such a thing, but it became a struggle. In the end, about 1171, a bishop, I won’t say which, beheaded Sinterklaas.”

“Burned at the stake, frozen to death, beheaded,” Chris said.

“I know,” Santa agreed.  “It is not an easy job.  In the Middle Ages, mostly in Europe, though just hinting of spreading world-wide, Sir Christmas, an honest to goodness knight, took the job.  He had a retinue of helpers by then, and the elves and fairies of Christmas as well.  He needed the help.  And in 1383, the one who followed, an Englishman, kept to the theme.  Father Christmas was what they called him.  He saw the celebration up to the days of reformation.

“The reformation.  That must have been a difficult time to hold things together,” Chris surmised.  “Christmas itself might have splintered into dozens of separate traditions.”

“There are dozens of separate traditions,” Santa said.  “Some still celebrate December sixth.  Some celebrate on January sixth—the day the wise men presumably arrived bearing gifts.  It is hard to keep track of, but the Spirit of Christmas, the love, joy, peace on earth, the giving and caring for one another and celebrating the time of the Word made flesh remains.”

Chris nodded.

“I will say, Father Christmas and Henry the VIII did not get along well.  But anyway, in 1601, the reformers wanted to move away from the Catholic tradition.  Sinterklaas had already dealt with the east-west schism, when the catholic and orthodox churches split.  This became like that, except the reformers were more nation-state or even congregational based, one of the main reforms being against a central, human authority. But that led to so many different churches—so many denominations.”  Santa shook his head, like the whole thing gave him a headache.

“Father Christmas found a German, since that was where most of the trouble centered. A Lutheran, Kris, with a beautiful young blonde daughter that he called his angel.  She took on the persona of an angel, sort of.  The Christkind.  Kris Kringle was his name, but some still referred to him as Nicholas.  I get Nicholas at times, or Saint Nick, sometimes. Can’t be helped.”

“I see you and Missus Clause up there at ten o’clock.”

“Yes.” Santa paused to pull out a handkerchief and sniff before he blew his nose.  “Pennsylvania Dutch, originally.  Clausen. Plenty of German roots, too.  She bravely went with me when the shop went bust. We headed to Indiana territory to make a new beginning.  We got caught in a snowstorm.  That was where Kris found us.  I forgot all about meeting him in New York that one time.  He offered me the job, and well… With the shop gone, and the Shawnee about to go on the warpath… Times being what they were, I accepted the job.”  Santa smiled and let out a little of his famous ho, ho, ho.  “I heard that once in a movie.”

“I know the movie,” Chris returned the smile.  “But that is more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas movie.”

Santa frowned.  “You know, I am not entirely happy with some of the ways I have been portrayed.  But honestly, each Santa, in turn, has had some impact on that portrayal—in the human psyche.  Nicholas, long white beard, living in the frozen north, and so on.  Then, there have been some exaggerations cooked up in the human mind.  Can’t be helped.  I hope you realize I don’t actually travel around the entire world in a single night, bringing presents to all the good boys and girls.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, there is a workshop, and we make toys, but we also make plenty of ordinary things as well.  Shoes, coats, soap and clothes.  We package lots of food, mostly dried and canned, though some cookies and candy. Toothbrushes have been a big one these last fifty years or so.  Mostly, they get put in boxes and delivered to the poor and needy through others. Goodwill, Salvation Army, Samaritan’s Purse, and churches; thousands of churches all over the world.  I have delivered some few, special needs now and then, but mostly the elves take care of passing on our work to where it is needed.”

“Elves that appear human,” Chris understood, and had a revelation. “Those two soldiers in 1914, with the Christmas cookies.  They were disguised elves.”  His eyes got big.  “That old priest in the Catholic church was you.”

“Yes,” Santa admitted, before he looked down at his boots, what he could see over his belly. “And Plum and Roy.  Sorry about them.”

“They are all right,” Chris answered.  “Plum just talks too much without any watch on his tongue, and Roy doesn’t say enough.”

“Yes,” Santa let out that little smile.  “That about sums them up.”

“And Merry?” Chris said, but it was a question.

“That little girl… I mean, that lovely young woman.  She thought I was getting too old, which I am.  She wanted to bring you here to help me in my old age.  That was very kind and thoughtful of her.  But you know, once an elf gets attached, they are very hard to remove.”  Chris stared at the wall for a moment, and Santa looked at him, squarely.   “You know, if you marry her, she will stop being an elf and become human.”  Chris did not know that, and thought maybe that would be asking too much, but Santa took his arm again, as he did at the beginning.  “How about we let her decide that,” he said, and Chris nodded, before he swallowed his feelings and spoke.

“But now, Lilly.  Did you have to kidnap her?  Where is she?”

Santa held up his hands to stave off Chris’ anger.  “She is here, and fine.  She is with her mother, Serissa.”

“Serissa? She is alive?”

“Serissa. She is the Christmas Rose, a fairy.” Santa paused to let that knowledge sink in.  Chris’ eyes got big as he remembered several strange events in Lilly’s young life.

“I want to see her.  I need to see her.”

Santa still had his hands up to make Chris pause.  “First things first.  Do you want the job?”

A Holiday Journey 19

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Chris pushed as fast as he could through the brambles and bushes at ground level. He could hardly see where to place his feet, but Lilly was in trouble.  The sky remained storm dark, and it seemed doubly dark under the trees.  The only grace seemed most of the snow got caught in the branches above.

“Lilly,” Chris called.  He heard a deep, guttural growl off to his right, and headed toward it instead of away from it.  “Lilly.” Suddenly, he imagined that maybe the missing reindeer was all part of the game.  He tried again. “Roy.  Plum. Merry.”  He stopped just inside a small clearing.  Something like a street light, or the moon come down through the clouds could be seen overhead.  A creature, or person that looked too much like Courtney for comfort, stood on the edge of the trees, ten feet off.  She had Lilly, with a hand or claw over Lilly’s mouth.  Her other claw held a knife pointed at Lilly’s throat, and she spoke in a harsh, chilling version of Courtney’s voice.

“Your elf maid has deserted you.”

“Hardly,” Chris responded, pulling up all the courage he had. “She has gone to help save the animals, and I support her in doing good for others.”  He dared not move closer for fear of what might happen to Lilly.

Courtney turned down her blood-red lips, not liking that answer.  She showed her fangs.  “Making love to an elf is a disgusting idea.”  Courtney shivered, like one repulsed by the idea of so much as touching such a person.

Chris laughed, a real “Ha, ha, ha,” and only a small bit of nervousness could be heard in the laugh.  Most of it sounded genuinely amused.  “But Courtney, I thought you were into all that social justice stuff.  Origin, skin color, even species should not matter. You know, love wins.”

“Are you prepared to have pointy-eared freaks for children?”

“I have found the world full of every kind of people, and many of them try to be good, even if they often fail.  True, there are some bad ones, and that is sad, but we pray for them.”

“A pointless exercise, praying to some sky-god.”  Courtney shuffled what looked like cloven hooves in the snow.

“But this is Christmas Eve,” Chris continued.  “Far from being pointless, this is the night the promise of love became real in a baby.  Love won on this night, and you lost.  You have no power here.”

“No.” Courtney grabbed Lilly more securely and scratched her cheek.

“Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentle-kindness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control.  All these things are real.  They are not only real, but on this night, they came to live in the heart of all who believe.  You have no place in such a heart.”

“No.”

“Lights,” Chris called.  He figured out what those moving lights were.  “Lights, I need you.”

One by one, the fairies of light abandoned the great tree in the wilderness and attended to Chris.  It miraculously stopped snowing in the little clearing, and the Courtney-beast looked up and around, dread written across her face.  As the fairies arrived, the light in the clearing increased until it became almot too bright to see.

“I will pray for you,” Chris said, as he closed his eyes.

“No,” Courtney screamed and vanished with Lilly still struggling against the claw.

Chris lay down in the snow, not sure if what he saw had been real or a dream.  He felt his head spin.  He spent all week worried about Lilly, and now he could not be sure what just happened.  He felt exhausted, and did not pay close attention to what he was doing.  He knew the devil was real, but had no power over the people of faith.  Faith, hope, and love, he thought.  But the greatest of these is love.  He fell asleep, and the fairies kept careful watch in the night.

 

Cue: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies from “The Nutcracker”

A Holiday Journey, The London Symphony Orchestra

conducted by Don Jackson.  Ó℗CD Guy Music Inc., 2001

 

When Chris woke, the sun just began to brighten the horizon.  He found a blanket beneath him, and another on top of him.  He felt warm enough, glad the snow did not fall on his face all night.  He figured the others must have returned and found him in the night.

“Merry?”

She did not answer, so he sat up and found himself alone on the edge of a clearing. He stood, picked up both blankets, and draped them around his shoulders.  He looked around, in every direction, twice.  He must have gotten turned around in the dark.  He looked as hard as he could through the trees, but saw no sign of the others, and no sign of the big Christmas tree.  He thought to wait.  As a child, he got told he should stay where he was until the others found him. He folded a blanket and set it on the ground beneath a tree so he could sit and watch the sun rise.

“Today is Sunday,” he said to himself.  “It is the real Christmas Eve back home.”  He did not want to think of home.  Without Lilly, he had no home.

“Eighteen-eleven,” he said out loud.  “From 2017, that makes two hundred and six years.”  He did not understand.  Why did they have to travel into the past?  Why did they move fifty-plus years at a time?  Was there some significance to those times?  He could only remember the Christmas villages his grandmother used to collect.  He remembered the Yuletide diner from the nineteen-sixties village.  He recalled some of the eighteen-sixties dickens village. London Towne, if he recalled correctly. World War I in the trenches made no connection, however, and eighteen-eleven in the wilderness of Indiana territory with a giant Christmas tree in the middle of nowhere made even less sense.

“Merry,” Chris tried one more time before he got up.  It started getting too cold to continue to sit.  He had to start walking to warm up.  He considered walking the edge of the clearing, to stay where he was, but he decided that would be stupid, and boring.  He opted to pick a direction and see what he could find. He had thought through his movement through the trees in the night, and tried to pick a way that would lead him back to the great tree, but he had little hope that he might choose the right way.

“Merry.” He called now and then as he pushed through the undergrowth and occasionally growled at the thorns and burrs. “Plum.  Roy.” he sometimes added, and sometimes he walked in silence.  He was not sure what sort of Indians inhabited Indiana territory, but it would not be good to run into a hunting party, or worse, a war party of some sort.  One more push, and he came out on a two-rut road, a wagon trail of some sort that vanished quickly among the trees behind him, but cut well through the trees ahead. The snow looked thick on the road, but it would do, if his toes did not freeze off.

“Merry,” he called one more time before he started off down the road.  He hummed and whistled some Christmas songs, to occupy his thoughts, it being Christmas Eve for real, back home.  He remembered it was Sunday, so he changed his humming to his favorite Christmas carols, including O Little Town of Bethlehem, as he climbed a small hill where the trees finally gave out.

On top of the hill, he saw a village up ahead—a small town at the bottom of the hill. It looked to be built mostly of log cabins, though he did see a few slat-wood houses.  He did not see any people there, but he figured about ten o’clock on Sunday, and they all might be in church.  After all, 1811 in pioneer territory, he thought.  He saw a steeple in the distance, and headed for it.

Chris whistled Silent Night as he wound through what looked like a deserted town and came at last to the steps of the church.  He did not hear anything inside or outside the church, and found that curious. He looked up at the great circular stained glass window, but could not make out exactly what it was supposed to depict.  He tried the front door, and found it unlocked.

“At last,” he whispered to himself.  “A church that doesn’t lock its doors on the Sunday before Christmas.”

The church had a small altar with candles burning in front, two steps up, and a single small pulpit, more of a podium off to the side.  It had a center aisle between a mere dozen pews—half-a-dozen on each side.  All were empty except for the very front pew, where a very old man with a long white beard appeared to be praying, with his hands clasped, and his head lowered.

Chris did not want to interrupt, so he looked quietly around the room where there was little to see, and at last, raised his head to look at the circle of stained glass from the inside.  It looked like a clock, with twelve spaces.  He imagined the twelve days of Christmas, but the eleventh and twelfth spaces appeared empty, being plain glass.  The other ten spaces had pictures of people.  He recognized the ten o’clock space being Santa and Missus Claus.  He spun around to look again at the old man in the front pew.  That man lifted his head and began to stand, moaning a little as he had to make his knees work.

“You made it,” the old man said.

“Santa?”

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A Holiday Journey 18

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“This tree is more than two hundred years old,” Plum said, as he walked up from where the cowboys built a fire and got out what they had for supper.  One cowboy kept an eye on the reindeer to make sure they did not wander off into the forest that began a hundred yards off to the right.  The forest looked dark under the storm clouds, like a place even the Christmas lights could not brighten.

“It is tall enough, and bright enough with all the lights,” Merry said.

“It is very Christmas-like,” Chris agreed, but hesitated, before he added, “But something seems to be holding back the joy—the merry and bright—the Christmas Spirit.”

Merry took Chris’ arm and let out a small sound that suggested her heart might have broken.  “Missus Claus passed away a few years ago,” she confessed.  “And Santa has gotten very old.  It is not the same, but we try not to notice.”  She sniffed, and Chris slipped his arm around her to pull her in close.  Chris imagined one of the lights moved.  His mind said the wind, but there was no wind to speak of at the moment, like the calm before the storm.  Before he could look closer, someone called.

“Over here,” Roy’s voice sounded out in the snow.  “Mister Shepherd.  Merry.” Chris and Merry went to see.  Roy and two of the cowboys had gotten the evergreen out of the wagon and stuck it in a hole that Chris had not noticed.  They had spades to cover the roots, and Plum stood there admiring the tree.

“Looks nice,” Chris thought a compliment was in order.  “Looks bigger than I thought.”

“It is as old as you are,” Plum responded.  “It is your tree.”

“My tree?” Chris asked.

Roy nodded, and Plum spoke again.  “You need to touch it to bring it to life.”

“I what?”

“Go on,” Merry said, and held his arm out toward the tree.  “Think of your Christmas tree at home.  Think of both trees, and all the love that went into them.”

Chris hesitated, but trusted Merry. He reached out and touched a branch of the tree, and at once the tree became strung with lights and ornaments.  The lights stayed lit, even though they had no place to plug them in.  The ornaments, he recognized.  His mother loved to decorate, and she kept those ornaments as well as she could through the years.  They looked worn, but lovingly clean, and… yes, he saw the ornaments he bought over the last ten years for his artificial tree. Chris dropped his face into his hands and held back his tears.  He mumbled for Merry.

 “Lilly would love this tree.”

He decided this game had gone on long enough.  He needed to find Lilly.  He needed to know she was all right.  He turned on Merry, took her by her shoulders, and said, “Tell me about Lilly.”

A dark wind blew through the camp.  The wagon shook.  The horses neighed.  The fire flickered, and the cowboy by the cooking pot yelled.

“They are stealing the reindeer.”

“All hands-on deck,” Plum yelled, and people rushed for their horses.

“Stay here,” Merry told Chris.  “You will be safe here, and I promise to tell you everything when I get back.”

Roy came up, trailing Merry’s horse.  She mounted and they rode in the direction the wind had gone, soon disappearing in the darkness beyond the lights of the trees.

Chris did not know what to do.  He sat down by the fire, left alone in the wilderness.  He stood and retrieved a blanket from the wagon and went to sit again, pausing only to assure the two big draught horses that they were not forgotten.  He poked at the beans that were cooking.  He sighed and felt grateful for the light from the tree behind him.  He refused to look at his own, personal tree.  There were too many memories there, and not all happy ones.  He supposed he felt grateful for the light from that tree as well.  Being alone, in the wilderness, at night, in a storm would be spooky, no, it would be frightening in the dark.

It began to snow great flakes of white, and soon, it began to snow hard.  The wind picked up, and Chris found his mind taken by the wind.  He remembered a day he did not want to remember.  Ricky was there.  He looked young.  Mama was there, too, weeping.  It was the day his father got buried.  They were at the graveside.

Chris sniffed.  He hugged his Mama and wept with her.  He tried to hug Ricky, but Ricky did not want to be hugged.  He looked out over the graves, and saw an angel there, in the snow. It did not appear a clear image; just an outline.  But Chris felt comforted.  He knew his father would be all right.  It was the promise of Christmas.

But it did not snow at his father’s funeral.  That happened in the summer.

Chris paused to gather his thoughts.  He looked again, but saw no image of an angel.  He stirred the beans in the pot and tried to wait patiently for the others to return. He looked at the fire and saw something he did not want to see.

He saw Ricky in full battle gear, carefully and quietly climbing the steps to the roof, clutching tight to his rifle.  The village was on fire, but sniper shot continued to come from the roof.  They could not call in air or artillery against innocent civilians.  They could not complete their mission under fire.  He came around a corner in the staircase. He faced a boy—barely a teenager holding an AK-47.  Ricky hesitated to kill a child. Triggers got pulled at the same time.  The boy collapsed.  Ricky got riddled full of bullets.

“No,” Chris yelled and covered his eyes.  He prayed for Ricky.  He prayed for Lilly, and Serissa, whom he never met.  He prayed for that boy, and wept some more.  He wiped his eyes, stirred the beans once, and stood.  It started getting too cold to just sit and wait. He put another log on the fire, and dreaded what was to come.

Chris turned to stare at the big Christmas tree set out in the middle of nowhere.  Indiana Territory, 1812, or actually, 1811, Christmas eve.  He imagined the lights were moving again.  It had to be a trick of the wind, the snowfall, and the ice in the branches.  The moving lights looked hypnotic.  He began to cry before he saw.

He held his mother’s hand when she died.  He wept then.  He wept again in the face of the tree.  He heard a voice then, or perhaps now.  It may have been the nurse.  He always thought it was an angel.

“She is in a better place now.  There is no more pain and no more suffering.”  Poor Chris went out the door to Lilly.  He held her and wept all over the little girl, and she wept with him.  They were all that remained, but at least they had each other. They had each other, Chris thought. He needed to blow his nose, but he heard something that took all of his attention.

“Uncle Chris…”  Chris turned toward the dark woods.  He thought the call came from there.  “Uncle Chris. Help me.”

Chris ran across the field and entered the woods without a second thought.

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MONDAY, Tuesday and Wednesday, the final chapter in A Holiday Journey:  Chris confronts the real Santa Claus, but it does not turn out the way he expects.

Until Then, Happy Reading

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