Christmas

Christmas, by Zona Gale

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Title: Christmas A Story
Author: Zona Gale
Illustrator: Leon V. Solon
Release Date: February 4, 2007 [EBook #20516]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHRISTMAS ***

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CHRISTMAS
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW
YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO
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[Illustration: "MARY FILLED HER ARMS WITH HAY AND
TURNED TO THE MANGER"]
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CHRISTMAS
A STORY
BY ZONA GALE AUTHOR OF "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND
ETARRE" "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LEON V. SOLON
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 All rights reserved
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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE McCLURE PUBLICATIONS,
INCORPORATED.
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1912.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

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ILLUSTRATIONS
"Mary filled her arms with hay, and turned to the manger" Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"He stood looking at it from part way across the road" 76
"Across the still fields came flashing the point of flame" 110
"The children began to sing, 'Go bury Saint Nicklis'" 150
"Their way led east between high banks of snow" 200
"The three men stepped into the lamplight" 240
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CHRISTMAS
I
It was in October that Mary Chavah burned over the grass of her lawn,
and the flame ran free across the place where in Spring her wild flower
bed was made. Two weeks later she had there a great patch of purple
violets. And all Old Trail Town, which takes account of its neighbours'
flowers, of the migratory birds, of eclipses, and the like, came to see the
wonder.
"Mary Chavah!" said most of the village, "you're the luckiest woman
alive. If a miracle was bound to happen, it'd get itself happened to you."
"I don't believe in miracles, though," Mary wrote to Jenny Wing.
"These come just natural--only we don't know how."
"That is miracles," Jenny wrote back. "They do come natural--we don't

know how."
"At this rate," said Ellen Bourne, one of Mary's neighbours, "you'll be
having roses bloom in your yard about Christmas time. For a Christmas
present."
"I don't believe in Christmas," Mary said. "I thought you knew that. But
I'll take the roses, though, if they come in the Winter," she added, with
her queer flash of smile.
When it was dusk, or early in the morning, Mary Chavah, with her long
shawl over her head, stooped beside the violets and loosened the earth
about them with her whole hand, and as if she reverenced violets more
than finger tips. And she thought:--
"Ain't it just as if Spring was right over back of the air all the time--and
it could come if we knew how to call it? But we don't know."
But whatever she thought about it, Mary kept in her heart. For it was as
if not only Spring, but new life, or some other holy thing were nearer
than one thought and had spoken to her, there on the edge of Winter.
And Old Trail Town asked itself:--
"Ain't Mary Chavah the funniest? Look how nice she is about
everything--and yet you know she won't never keep Christmas at all.
No, sir. She ain't kept a single Christmas in years. I donno why...."

II
Moving about on his little lawn in the dark, Ebenezer Rule was aware
of two deeper shadows before him. They were between him and the
leafless lilacs and mulberries that lined the street wall. A moment
before he had been looking at that darkness and remembering how,
once, as a little boy, he had slept there under the wall and had dreamed
that he had a kingdom.

"Who is't?" he asked sharply.
"Hello, Ebenezer," said Simeon Buck, "it's only me and Abel. We're
all."
Ebenezer Rule came toward them. It was so dark that they could barely
distinguish each other. Their voices had to do it all.
"What you doing out here?" one of the deeper shadows demanded.
"Oh, nothing," said Ebenezer, irritably, "not a thing."
He did not ask them to go in the house, and the three stood there
awkwardly, handling the time like a blunt instrument. Then Simeon
Buck, proprietor of the Simeon Buck North American Dry Goods
Exchange, plunged into what they had come to say.
"Ebenezer," he said,