Christmas | Page 5

it, it was sensible, and they admitted it. Yet, besides
Mary Chavah and Ebenezer Rule, probably the only person in the town
whose satisfaction in the project could be counted on to be unfeigned
was little Tab Winslow. For Tab, as all the town knew, had a turkey
brought up by his own hand to be the Winslows' Christmas dinner, but
such had become Tab's intimacy with and fondness for the turkey that
he was prepared to forego his Christmas if only that dinner were
foregone, too.
"Theophilus Thistledown is such a human turkey," Tab had been heard
explaining patiently; "he knows me--and he knows his name. He don't
expect us to eat him ... why, you can't eat anything that knows its
name."
But every one else was just merely sensible. And they had been
discussing Christmas in this sensible strain at the town meeting that
night, before Simeon and Abel broached their plan for standardizing
their sensible leanings.
Somebody had said that Jenny Wing, and Bruce Rule, who was
Ebenezer's nephew, were expected home for Christmas, and had added
that it "didn't look as if there would be much of any Christmas down to
the station to meet them." On which Mis' Mortimer Bates had spoken
out, philosophical to the point of brutality. Mis' Bates was little and
brown and quick, and her clothes seemed always to curtain her off, so
that her figure was no part of her presence.
"I ain't going to do a thing for Christmas this year," she declared, as
nearly everybody in the village had intermittently declared, "not a
living, breathing thing. I can't, and folks might just as well know it, flat
foot. What's the use of buying tinsel and flim-flam when you're eating
milk gravy to save butter and using salt sacks for handkerchiefs? I ain't
educated up to see it."
Mis' Jane Moran, who had changed her chair three times to avoid a

draught, sat down carefully in her fourth chair, her face twitching a
little as if its muscles were connected with her joints.
"Christmas won't be no different from any other day to our house this
year," she said. "We'll get up and eat our three meals and sit down and
look at each other. We can't even spare a hen--she might lay if we
didn't eat her."
Mis' Abby Winslow, mother of seven under fifteen, looked up from her
rocking-chair--Mis' Winslow always sat limp in chairs as if they were
reaching out to rest her and, indeed, this occasional yielding to the
force of gravity was almost her only luxury.
"You ain't thinking of the children, Mis' Bates," she said, "nor you
either, Jane Moran, or you couldn't talk that way. We can't have no real
Christmas, of course. But I'd planned some little things made out of
what I had in the house: things that wouldn't be anything, and yet
would seem a little something."
Mis' Mortimer Bates swept round at her.
"Children," she said, "ought to be showed how to do without things.
Bennet and Gussie ain't expecting a sliver of nothing for Christmas--not
a sliver."
Mis' Winslow unexpectedly flared up.
"Whether it shows through on the outside or not," she said, "I'll bet you
they are."
"My three," Mis' Emerson Morse put in pacifically, "have been kept
from popping corn and cracking nuts all Fall so's they could do both
Christmas night, and it would seem like something that was
something."
"That ain't the idea," Mis' Bates insisted; "I want them learnt to do
without--" ("They'll learn that," Mis' Abby Winslow said; "they'll
learn....") "Happening as it does to most every one of us not to have no

Christmas, they won't be no distinctions drawn. None of the children
can brag--and children is limbs of Satan for bragging," she added. (She
was remembering a brief conversation overheard that day between
Gussie and Pep, the minister's son:--
"I've got a doll," said Gussie.
"I've got a dollar," said Pep.
"My mamma went to a tea party," said Gussie.
"My mamma give one," said Pep.
Gussie mustered her forces. "My papa goes to work every morning,"
she topped it.
"My papa don't have to," said Pep, and closed the incident.)
"I can't help who's a limb of Satan," Mis' Winslow replied doggedly, "I
can't seem to sense Christmas time without Christmas."
"It won't be Christmas time if you don't have any Christmas," Mis'
Bates persisted.
"Oh, yes it will," Mis' Winslow said. "Oh, yes, it will. You can't stop
that."
It was Mis' Bates, who, from the high-backed plush rocker, rapped with
the blue glass paperweight on the red glass lamp and, in the absence of
Mr. Bates, called the meeting to order. The Old Trail Town Society
was organized on a platform of "membership unlimited, dues nothing