ONE would have known that it was the day before Christmas at the
Cross-Roads store, even if the big life insurance calendar over the desk
had not proclaimed the fact in bold red figures. An unwonted bustle
pervaded the place. Rows of plump, dressed turkeys hung outside the
door, and on the end of the counter where the pyramid of canned tomatoes
was usually stacked, a little evergreen tree stood in a brave array of
tinsel and tiny Christmas tapers.
It was only an advertisement. No one might hope to be the proud
possessor of the Noah's ark lodged in its branches, or of the cheap toys
and candy rings dangling from every limb, unless he had the necessary
pennies. Still, every child who passed it eyed it with such wistful
glances that the little rubber Santa Claus at the base must have felt
his elastic heart stretch almost to bursting.
Above the familiar odour of coal-oil and mackerel, new leather, roasted
coffee and pickle brine, rose the holiday fragrance of cedar and
oranges.
"Makes me think of when I was a kid," said a drummer who had been
joking with the men around the stove, trying to kill time while he
waited for the train that was to take him home for Christmas. "There's
nothing like that smell of cedar and oranges to resurrect the boy in a
man. It puts me straight back into knickerbockers again, among a whole
grove of early Christmas trees. I'll never forget the way I felt when I
picked my first pair of skates off one of them. A house and lot wouldn't
give me such a thrill now."
"Aw, I don't believe Christmas is at all what it's cracked up to be,"
said a voice from behind the stove, in such a gloomy tone that a knowing
smile passed around the circle.
"Bet on you, Bud Hines, for findin' trouble, every time," laughed the
storekeeper. "Why, Bud, there ain't no screw loose in Christmas, is
there?"
"Well, there just is!" snapped the man, resenting the laugh. "It comes
too often for one thing. I just wish it had happened on leap-year, the
twenty-ninth of February. It would be a heap less expensive having it
just once in four years. Seems to me we're always treading on its heels.
My old woman hardly gets done knitting tidies for one Christmas till
she's hard at it for another.
"Anyhow, Christmas never measures up to what you think it's a-going
to--not by a jug-full. Sure as you get your heart set on a patent
nail-puller or a pair of fur gloves--something that'll do _you_ some
good--your wife gives you a carpet sweeper, or an alarm-clock that
rattles you out an hour too early every morning."
The drummer led the uproarious laughter that followed. They were ready
to laugh at anything in this season of good cheer, and the drummer's
vociferous merriment was irresistible. He slapped the speaker on the
back, adding jokingly, "That's one thing Job never had to put up, did
he, partner! He nearly lost his reputation for politeness over the
misfit advice he didn't want. But there's no telling what he'd have done
with misfit Christmas gifts. It would take a star actor to play the
grateful for some of the things people find in their stockings. For
instance, to have a fond female relative give you a shaving outfit, when
you wear a full beard."
"You bet your life," answered the storekeeper feelingly. "Now, if Santa
Claus wasn't a fake--"
"Hist!" said the drummer, with a significant glance toward a small boy,
perched on a soap-box in their midst, listening open-mouthed to every
word. "I've children myself, and I'd punch anybody's head who would
shake their faith in Santy. It's one of the rosy backgrounds of
childhood, in my opinion, and I've got a heap of happiness out of it
since I was a kid, too, looking back and recollecting."
It was very little happiness that the boy on the soap-box was getting
out of anything, that gray December afternoon. He was weighed down with
a feeling of age and responsibility that bore heavily on his
eight-year-old shoulders. He had long felt the strain of his position,
as pattern to the house of Perkins, being the oldest of five. Now there
was another one, and to be counted as the oldest of six pushed him
almost to the verge of gray hairs.
There was another reason for his tear-stained face. He had been
disillusioned. Only that noon, his own mother had done that for which
the drummer would have punched any one's head, had it been done to his
children. "We're too poor, Sammy. There can't be any Christmas at our
house this year," she had said, fretfully, as she stopped the noisy
driving of nails into the chimney, on which he contemplated hanging the
fraternal stockings. To his astonished "Why?" she had replied with a few
blunt truths that sent him out from her presence, shorn of all his
childish hopefulness as completely as Samson was shorn of his strength.
There had been a sorry half-hour in the hay-mow, where he snuffled over
his shattered faith alone, and from whence he went out, a hardened
little skeptic, to readjust himself to a cold and Santa Clausless world.
The only glimmer of comfort he had had since was when the drummer, with
a friendly wink, slipped a nickel into his hand. But even that added to
his weight of responsibility. He dropped it back and forth from one
little red mitten to another, with two impulses strong upon him. The
first was to spend it for six striped sticks of peppermint candy, one
for each stocking, and thus compel Christmas to come to the house of
Perkins. The other was to buy one orange and go off in a corner and suck
it all by himself. He felt that fate owed him that much of a reparation
for his disappointment. He was in the midst of this inward debate when a
new voice joined the discussion around the stove. It came from Cy Akers.
"Well, _I_ think it's downright sinful to stuff a child with such
notions. You may call 'em fairy-tales all you like, but it's nothing
more or less than a pack of lies. The idea of a Christian payrent
sitting up and telling his immortal child that a big fat man in furs
will drive through the air to-night in a reindeer sleigh right over the
roofs and squeeze himself down a lot of sooty chimneys, with a bag of
gimcracks on his back--it's all fol-de-rol! I never could see how any
intelligent young one could believe it. I never did. But that's one
thing about me, as the poet says, 'If I've one pecooliar feature it's a
nose that won't be led.' I never could be made to take stock in any such
nonsense, even as a boy. I'll leave it to Mr. Asa Holmes, here, if it
isn't wrong to be putting such ideas into the youth of our land."
The old miller ran his fingers through his short white hair and looked
around. His smile was wholesome as it was genial. He was used to being
called in judgment on these neighbourhood discussions, and he spoke with
the air of one who felt that his words carried weight:
"You're putting it pretty strong, Cy," he said, with a laugh, and then a
tender, reminiscent light gleamed in his old eyes.
"You see it's this way with me, boys. We never heard any of these
things when I was a lad. It's plain facts in a pioneer cabin, you know.
Father taught us about Christmas in the plain words that he found set
down in the Gospels, and I told it the same way to my boys. When my
first little grandson came back to the old house to spend Christmas, I
thought it was almost heathenish for his mother to have him send letters
up the chimney and talk as if Santa Claus was some real person. I told
her so one day, and asked what was going to happen when the little
fellow outgrew such beliefs.
"'Why, Father Holmes,' said she,--I can hear her now, words and tones,
for it set me to thinking,--'don't you see that he is all the time
growing into a broader belief? It's this way.' She picked up a big apple
from the table. 'Once this apple was only a tiny seed-pod in the heart
of a pink blossom. The beauty of the blossom was all that the world saw,
at first, but gradually, as the fruit swelled and developed, the pink
petals fell off, naturally and easily, and the growing fruit was left.
My little son's idea of Christmas is in the blossom time now. This rosy
glamour of old customs and traditions that makes it so beautiful to him
is taking the part of the pink petals. They will fall away by and by, of
their own accord, for underneath a beautiful truth is beginning to swell
to fruitage. Santa Claus is the Spirit of Christmas love and giving,
personified. It is because I want to make it real and vital, something
that my baby's mind can grasp and enjoy, that I incarnate it in the form
of the good old Saint Nicholas, but I never let him lose sight of the
Star. It was the Spirit of Christmas that started the wise men on their
search, and they followed the Star and they found the Child, and laid
gifts at his feet. And when the Child was grown, he, too, went out in
the world and followed the Star and scattered his gifts of love and
healing for all the children of men. And so it has gone on ever since,
that Spirit of Christmas, impelling us to follow and to find and to
give, wherever there is a need for our gold and frankincense and myrrh.
That is the larger belief my boy is growing into, from the smaller.'
"And she is right," said the old man, after an impressive pause. "She
raised that boy to be an own brother to Santa Claus, as far as good-will
to men goes. It's Christmas all the year round wherever _he_ is. And now
when he brings his boys back to the old home and hangs their stockings
up by the fire, I never say a word. Sometimes when the little chaps are
hunting for the marks of the reindeer hoofs in the ashes, I kneel down
on the old hearthstone and hunt, too.
* * * * *
"A brother to Santa Claus!" The phrase still echoed in the heart of
Perkins's oldest when the group around the stove dispersed. It was that
which decided the fate of the nickel, and filled the little red mittens
with sticks of striped delight for six, instead of the lone orange for
one. Out of a conversation but dimly understood he had gathered a vague
comfort. It made less difference that his patron saint was a myth, since
he had learned there might be brothers in the Claus family for him to
fall back upon. Then his fingers closed over the paper bag of
peppermints, and, suddenly, with a little thrill, he felt that in some
queer way he belonged to that same brotherhood.
As he fumbled at the latch, the old miller, who always saw his own
boyhood rise before him in that small tow-headed figure, and who somehow
had divined the cause of the tear-streaks on the dirty little face,
called him. "Here, sonny!" It was a pair of shining new skates that
dangled from the miller's hands into his.
One look of rapturous delight, and two little feet were flying homeward
down the frozen pike, beating time to a joy that only the overflowing
heart of a child can know, when its troubles are all healed, and faith
in mankind restored. And the old man, going home in the frosty twilight
of the Christmas eve, saw before him all the way the light of a shining
star.