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Mulling over the magic—and the sanctity—of a child’s Christmas

Here they were, just inside the department store door:?wicker trays of candied fruit wrapped in cellophane. A smile lit up my face as I carefully placed the nicest looking one in my cart.

From my earliest recollections of Christmas, I’d been fascinated by candied fruit. Each year my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Molly, sent Nanna a tray of the confections from Boston. I waited for the sturdy cardboard box much more eagerly than did my grandmother—she’d simply unwrap it, gaze at the fruit for a moment, then with a sigh, say “Oh, Molly,” placing it on the parlour mantel.

In my child’s view, this was a thing of mysterious beauty. The bright red cherries, the vibrant yellow pineapple and the glistening dark dates and figs were resplendent in their sugar coating beneath a pristine cellophane covering; things of infinite wonder. Then the day finally came for the fruit to be offered to Christmas visitors, its pristine beauty lost by the crackling removal of its wrapping. I was never offered any of the fruit, not even what was left after the visiting marauders were finished with it. It was a grown-up delicacy.

The slight didn’t offend me. The little impulse called curiosity regarding the fruit’s taste did rear its head, but better to have the fantasy intact—I couldn’t bear the thought of its flavour not living up to the ambrosia of my imagination.

The sight of the remaining figs and the odd pieces of pineapple laying helter-skelter in their woven basket (the cherries never lasted) seemed as sad a sight as when I found one of my snow tunnels crushed by neighbourhood boys.

The arrival of the candied fruit tray marked the first of many magic mysteries of Christmas at my grandparents’ house. Next there was the amazing phenomenon of how sugar would magically stick to the warm doughnuts Nanna fried in a big, cast iron pan on the wood stove.

Then there was the mystery of the missing chickens. Every year, mid December, two of my grandfather’s Rhode Island Reds disappeared. Granddaddy said they’d wandered off and had probably found another family to live with. It was years before I connected the two golden brown birds my grandmother served up for Christmas dinner with those hens that had suddenly disappeared.

I was about the same age, five or six, when I realized that the plum pudding my grandmother steamed in the oven days before the big event magically burst into flames when touched with a match because of its connection to the bottle she kept tucked in the back of the kitchen cupboard.

An even bigger mystery was how Santa got down the chimney. The big fireplace between the parlour and dining room was never lit on Christmas Eve, so the hearty old fellow was in no danger of being turned into a ball of flame, but still, looking up the flue, I couldn’t imagine how he managed it.

My grandfather explained that Santa was a spirit and could make himself into any size necessary to visit good children. Nevertheless, each Christmas Eve I found myself on hands and knees, peering up into the blackness—and not convinced that Granddaddy had it right.

What he apparently did have a handle on was a direct line to Santa. I’ll never forget the Christmas he arranged for the Jolly Old Elf to alter his schedule to pay me an early evening visit. I must have been misbehaving one Christmas Eve afternoon when he suggested Santa might drop in after supper to see what I was doing; then he’d know what presents to leave under the tree.

Slightly apprehensive, I settled down to eat my supper and shortly afterwards, when Granddaddy had gone out to feed the chickens, I heard it.

My heart leapt and seemed to stop. I heard sleigh bells, and there was definitely prancing and pawing on the verandah roof.

It took every ounce of my willpower not to rush out into the yard and look up. If I ever tried to actually see Santa, my nice rating would instantly plummet into the naughty range, Granddaddy had said one year when I was slow to go to bed on Christmas Eve.

So I sat at the kitchen table, hands clasped so tightly my knuckles were as white as the snow in the dooryard. My breath clogged in my throat as I waited, mesmerized at the magnificence of the moment.

A scuffling noise a few seconds later suggested lift-off. Then all was quiet.

I was just beginning to breathe normally again when Granddaddy came back into the kitchen. He stamped snow from his boots and began to unbutton his mackinaw.

“Granddaddy, he was here!” I leapt up to seize his cold hand. “I heard him… up on the roof! We have to go out and look for tracks!”

“I thought I saw something in the sky when I came out of the chicken coop,” he said thoughtfully. “So he did make it. I must remember to thank him.”

“Come on, come on!” I tugged at his hand. “I want to see where he landed.”

As I stood in the dooryard, Granddaddy placed a ladder against the edge of the roof, and climbed up to inspect the freshly fallen snow.

“What do you see? What do you see?” I was jumping up and down. “Are there hoof prints? Can you see Santa’s boot marks?”

By now Granddaddy had reached the roof, and he bent over to examine the snow.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “There are hoof prints…a lot of them. Some kind of deer, I’d say. And a few boot marks, too.”

“Let me see, let me see!” I cried starting up the ladder.

“No, no.” Granddaddy was already back on the top rung and beginning to descend. “It’s slippery up here. Your grandmother wouldn’t allow you on the roof. And I don’t think Santa would be happy to know you were checking up on him.”

His last sentence stopped me with one foot on the first step. Hoping I’d already passed the naughty-nice test, I wasn’t about to risk losing my rating.

That was a long time ago. I went down a few more aisles in the store, with its festive frippery and piped in holiday hits, lost in memories. Then I headed back for the fruit tray display to leave the one I had taken. I gave it a small pat, smiled, and pushed my cart toward the check-out.

Better to keep the mystery of Christmas intact.

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