A Treasury of Christmas Stories Read online

  My voice quavered as I sang, my English words blending with their Swahili. “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin mother and child …”

  Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. It was Christmas, a real Christmas, not one bound by cultures or traditions.

  In Africa, the wondrous story returned to touch me.

  Elaine L. Schulte is the author of thirty-six novels and hundreds of articles and short stories for both adults and children. She has lived in Europe and traveled extensively, but her “Swahili Christmas” turned out to be the best vacation of her life. She and her husband, Frank, have two sons and two grandchildren.

  The Christmas Well

  By Janet Lynn Oakley

  WHEN THE CITY PIPES broke at four above zero, the water spread out across our road like the thick roots of a crystal banyan tree and froze. We all came out to stare, our boots slipping on the remains of last week’s snow. It was three days before Christmas. Our trees and lights were up, our cookies were in the canisters, and our stockings were on the mantel, but we had no water.

  “Not until the twenty-eighth,” the Forest Hills Water Department said and would have left it at that until someone got the brilliant idea of hauling up a water tank and putting it at the top of the hill.

  “At least it’s something,” a neighbor said and went to organize her pots.

  Others weren’t so sure and said that the season was ruined.

  Our community well arrived that afternoon. An old World War II water tankard bristling with spigots, its camouflage shell looked odd against the neat prewar brick homes lined with hedges and crusted with old snow. Curious children and their parents watched a brief demonstration, and then were left to their imaginations as to how they would actually do it.

  I heard about the tankard after I came home from junior high school. Mom, Dad, and my brother, John, had already carried enough pots of water into the kitchen to make it look like a battlefield after a major roof leak. (There was a leak of some sort, a family member later recalled. A pipe had snapped from the cold.) We had water in stew pots, canning pots, saucepans, and even a few tin cans for the powder room. A large boiler was on the stove for doing dishes and washing hands.

  In the living room behind the swinging kitchen doors, Handel played on the radio. The windows were painted with angels and snow, and the Christmas tree was ready to trim. Christmas was not going to be delayed.

  Winters are cold and often snowy in Pittsburgh. Except for the hordes of children with whom I sledded in the open field below the alley, neighbors only glimpsed and waved at one another as they communally scraped ice or snow off windshields on the way to work or to shop. Snowman-worthy snow might bring out a few townspeople for a moment’s divertissement, but that was usually reserved for the younger crowd. Most folks kept to their calendar of baking, Christmas-card writing, and package sending-off. Visiting applied only to a few close friends and often it was by telephone to catch up on the day’s news. In winter we just stayed inside. The Christmas well changed that.

  From morning to night we bundled up in our bright wool coats and scarves and rubber overboots and trudged up the hill to the tankard with our pails and pots in hand, like ants making lines to a picnic. Neighbors that we hadn’t seen since summer or hardly knew at all tiptoed down their steep stairs or off their brick porches to go to the well. As we gathered at the spigots, conversations blossomed in the frigid air, puffing out like little smoke signals.

  “What’s news, Mrs. Hanna? Did you get your tree?”

  “My car didn’t start again.”

  “My grandkids are coming for Christmas Eve.”

  The pots and pans were filled, but so were the spaces between neighbors. Older times were recalled and strategies on hauling water offered.

  “When I was growing up on the farm we had a pump. Had to prime it every time. Mother always kept a can of water next to it just for that.”

  “We had a well in Italy. The whole village used it.”

  We stopped and listened to the stories. We filled and hauled and laughed at our communal inconvenience. Our own village was born right there in our neighborhood.

  Anything with a handle was employed. My family preferred our aluminum camping equipment, pots with wire handles that nestled together in the cellar when they weren’t in use. But neighbors’ containers ran the gambit of tin and copper pails to saucepans. Someone arrived with a wagon full of number five cans.

  Techniques on catching water varied. Some hung the handle on the spigot and let the container fill until it looked too heavy to lift. Sometimes it was. Others held the handle of their pots until they began to tilt.

  All day and night we came, the water spilling on our boots and onto the pavement. It was so cold that the water froze, leaving icy blobs around the tankard. At night under the streetlight, they gleamed like diamond cow pies.

  On Christmas Eve day, the morning broke clear and cold, but by noon the sky had begun to grow flat. The wind stung our cheeks like a sharp wet kiss. We scurried for last-minute presents and lingered over the evening meal, wondering if it would snow. Would we get to church? Or would we have to stay home? Service at eleven o’clock in the evening was always an adventure.

  Dark fell at four o’clock. We turned on the lights on our tree and in the windows. Outside, it began to snow. Invisible at first to the eye, the flakes grew from pinpoint to apple blossom size, sashaying down to the frozen ground. Bit by bit, crystal by crystal, the snow covered the street, the cars, the knobby roots of the oak tree in front of our house, with a tenuous mesh of white velvet fuzz.

  Then, belying its gentle start, the snowfall suddenly exploded, throwing out snowflakes like the contents of a huge featherbed. In a silent rush, it covered everything and piled up, mutating the street into a close, distant world. By 5:30, it rose four inches deep with more to come.

  “Janie, girl, will you go out and get water for dinner?”

  I pulled back from the window and smiled at my mother, who stood at the swinging door leading from the long living room to the kitchen. She wore a Christmas apron with ruffles and her hands were covered in flour. Behind her wafted the smell of cinnamon.

  “Sure.”

  I went into the kitchen and down to the side door landing where coats and boots collected. My mother handed me some pails. I opened the door and stepped out onto virgin snow.

  In my life there are scenes that have stayed with me always. They are hallowed memories, forever magical in my mind.

  Going to get water from the community well that Christmas Eve is one of them.

  The world beyond was still and silent, and a strange pale blue light reflected off hillocks of snow that looked for all their worth like confectioners’ sugar.

  My neighborhood had undergone a remarkable change. It no longer seemed an average residential street in a big city, but rather, a country lane in a long-ago time. The streets and yards had become one vast empty field, its hedges hidden somewhere under the snow. Candles flickered in windows. The trees overhead formed a tunnel whose roof was made of mist and falling snow. Far off, a street lamp beckoned like a muted star.

  I tightened my mittened grip around the handles of the pails, and like a character from A Christmas Carol, went out to get water from the well.

  When I reached the top of the street I stopped. Under a street lamp, the Christmas well stood, its cylinder shape topped off with several inches of snow, its tongue and wheels hidden. The bright yellow light of the lamp played over it and gave it a curious glow — like the manger in the Nativity scene under the star. It was impossible to see into the gloom around it. There was only the well and the snow rushing down from the sky. I felt utterly alone and at peace.

  I put down my pails.

  “Merry Christmas,” a neighbor said as she peered around the other side of the well.
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  “And a Happy New Year,” said another. “What a beautiful night.”

  From beyond the well, a line of scarves, hats, and coats dusted with downy snowflakes stepped forward with their pots and pails to say hello. My neighbors’ faces were red with cold but each had that particular smile of goodwill and humor that had brought us to the well.

  Christmas had come. A broken water pipe had not delayed it. We would gather our water and carry on with our lives as if nothing had happened. Except that something had. With each pot and pail of water we carried away, we also took a new sense of community and resourcefulness — and perhaps the true meaning of Christmas.

  I live in the Northwest now, where we rarely get snow at Christmas. But each Christmas Eve, I think of that snowy night when I went to gather water at the Christmas well. As I turn on the lights in my windows and on the Christmas tree, I look outside at my tree-lined street to where a city light stands guard above the hedges. I don’t even have to close my eyes to see the Christmas well glowing there under its light, the snow falling down on its cylindrical shape and the neighbors gathered around. It is etched forever in my mind.

  Let us always be neighbors to one another, not only during the holiday season, but throughout the year.

  Janet Lynn Oakley is the education curator at Skagit County Historical Museum in LaConner, Washington. She has published school and museum curricula as well as articles in historical journals and popular magazines, completed four novels and a picture book, and enjoys a good family yarn.

  Star of Wonder

  By Carol Tokar Pavliska

  THE DARKNESS, though encompassing, was anything but quiet and still. Three little figures bounced along in front of me, flashlight beams jerking spastically around, revealing split-second images: fencepost, pasture, dirt, packed clay, yellow coat, green cap. My husband reached over and held my cold hand in his large, warm one. He squeezed once to let me know he was aware of my gloomy mood.

  I stepped up my pace, determined to outdistance the shadow of sadness that followed me, so as to share in the joy of my family’s winter ritual. This was the night of our “cold walk.”

  It was a perfect night, really. Rarely in our South Texas climate does the first cold night of the season happen to hit on the night we first turn on our Christmas lights. But on this night it had happened. We were able to take our cold walk with the added bonus of viewing our Christmas lights from a distance.

  After a long, extremely hot summer and a short indistinguishable fall, the first cold front to blast across Texas is a noticeable event. There are some who say we don’t have a true change of seasons in South Texas, but with or without leaves in various shades of red, when an icy wind slaps you in the face immediately on the tail of a warm southern breeze, you’d better believe you notice it.

  When I was a child, my father had celebrated this exciting change in the weather with a cold walk. After a summer and fall spent in shorts and sandals, my sister and I were awkwardly bundled up in our somewhat foreign coats and hats. We then headed out into the darkness, leaving our mother behind to stir up some hot cocoa with which to welcome us home.

  We’d walk with our dad, basking in the shocking chill that we knew could very well be gone by the next day, replaced again by balmy air. Over the years, we spent many a Christmas Eve with our windows open and fans whirring, so we cherished this bit of winter and secretly hoped for a Christmas where we wouldn’t wilt beneath our brand-new sweaters.

  As we took our cold walk with Dad, my sister and I would watch our long shadows and puff our frosty breath. It was a little bit scary out there in the dark, and a whole lot of fun. We’d walk until our noses stung and our fingers grew numb and slipped from the mittens grasped by our father’s strong hands. We wanted the walk to last forever, and at the same time, we couldn’t wait for it to end so we could rush back to the warmth of our house and our mother’s arms.

  I let my mind linger on the sweet memories of my childhood as I walked down our farm’s dirt lane with my husband and children, walking briskly to warm myself in the bracing air. Yet, I found myself trying to shake off more than the chill. I was trying to shake off the overwhelming feeling of sadness I had carried home from a visit with my parents, earlier in the day.

  The usual excitement of the Christmas season was painfully absent from their house. There had been no tree. There had been no lights. My dad had tried to welcome me with a hug, but his fatigue was so great that he could barely manage a smile. His shoulders were as full as my mother’s eyes were empty. Rather than Christmas cheer filling the air, it was shrouded in the darkness and gloom of Alzheimer’s disease.

  I had hoped that, somehow, the magic of Christmas would have found its way into my childhood home. But it had not. Christmas had forgotten my parents. My parents had forgotten Christmas. I felt forgotten, as well. Forgotten by my mother who didn’t remember my name, and worse, forgotten by God.

  I had stayed and helped my dad, who suffered the very hard work of being a lone caregiver. I had done the best I could to lighten his load, but as I left I had the usual feeling that nothing had changed. Nothing I had been able to do during my visit seemed to matter much in the grander scheme of things. I could not bring the light back to my mother’s eyes, and I missed the warmth of her arms.

  Now, outside in the cold, surrounded by my elated children, I gave my shoulders one last shake and quickened my step. I was determined to take my own youngsters on a cold walk they’d always remember.

  The sky was bright with stars, crisp and clear, and little voices cut through the air with shrieks of delight. The children watched their breath and gazed in delight from beneath knit caps at the frigid night world while trying to hold on to flashlights with mitten-clad hands.

  As I walked, I felt the shadow of sadness falling farther behind. The bite of the cold air against my face woke me up to the joy of the night, and of the moment. As we arrived at the very end of our long dirt lane, right where it meets up with a longer dirt road, we prepared to turn around and head back. But just before we could, we saw a spectacular thing: A beautiful falling star, red and flaming with a huge sparkling tail, blazed across the sky.

  We stood speechless as it lit up our night — and literally shot from end to end of the sky, staying visible for several seconds. Shocked silence quickly gave way to hoops and hollers of excitement as the children realized what they’d seen: their first falling star. What a sign!

  As we headed home, I felt my burden lift and a sense of peace envelop me. My husband was equally excited, intrigued by how close we’d come to missing it completely. Could I believe that they were all three looking? Could I believe it happened just before we turned around? The timing, he thought, was accidentally perfect.

  But I felt there was no way we would have missed that star. It was our star, meant especially for us. I could almost hear a voice say, I haven’t forgotten you. I see you down there in the darkness. I hear your joyful cries. And I hear your painful pleas. I was just waiting until you were looking to answer.

  We walked home quietly, the shadow of sadness replaced with something else. Not hope, really. More like … reassurance.

  The comforting feeling followed us back down our dark country lane, made crisp and cold by a burst of wind from the north. Back to our small and plain house, made somehow spectacular by a row of colored lights, shining bright in a dark pasture. Back to warmth, our hearts renewed by a falling star that carried a very special Christmas message:

  We are not forgotten.

  Carol Tokar Pavliska lives with her husband and four children on a farm in Floresville, Texas, where she writes a family humor column for the local newspaper. Raising and homeschooling her children is her primary occupation and focus.

  Where the Heart Is

  By Christy Lanier-Attwood

  “CHRISTY, GO TELL your brother and sisters to hurry up,”
Mom said.

  “All right,” I groaned. At nine years old, I found being the oldest child a gigantic burden.

  I cupped my hands to round up my siblings, but Dad beat me to the punch. From the front door his voice boomed out, “Get a move on, kids. At the rate you’re going, we won’t get to Grandma’s house until tomorrow.”

  Grandpa also lived there, but for some reason no one ever called it his house.

  “Last one to the car’s a rotten egg,” Derris yelled over his shoulder as he ran outside, heading for the car.

  Gari and Cynthia hollered, “Dibs on shotgun,” and took off after him.

  Being the family thinker, I lagged behind and ended up squashed in the middle of the backseat. I elbowed my way to a comfortable position before Dad started the car and the chatter began. Try to imagine six people crunched in a compact car, everyone doing their darnedest to outtalk the others. No one got a word in edgewise, and most of the time it didn’t matter anyway, because everyone only half listened to each other.

  “I wish it would snow,” said seven-year-old Cynthia, the family dreamer.

  “Have you lost your mind?” I asked her. “It’s eighty degrees today.”

  “So? It could snow.” She made a face and stuck out her tongue.

  “I wouldn’t want that nasty thing in my mouth either,” I said.

  “Christy, you’re the oldest,” Dad reminded me. “You know better than to pick a fight.”

  See what I mean? I got blamed for everything, whether it was my fault or not.

  Cynthia mouthed a silent, “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah,” just about the time Mom’s singsong voice resonated over the front seat. “Y’all better behave. Santa Claus might be listening.”

  Santa was definitely listening, since he was the one driving us to Grandma’s.

  Here’s how I’d learned the truth: The year before on Christmas Eve, I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and caught sight of Mom and Dad in the living room. One by one, Dad removed gifts from a huge department store bag and held them out to Mom, whose eyes sparkled like the lights on the Christmas tree. With every gift Dad handed her, Mom returned a tender smile before she turned to place the package under the tree.