He pulls on his trousers and heads over to the station, breaking into a run once he has rounded the corner, and returns Fried’s call from the phone booth by the parade square.
Fried has called to tell him that there is something wrong with his new television set. A picture of an Indian has appeared and will not go away. Any other time, Jack would laugh. “It’s called a test pattern, Oskar. There will not be any more television programs until morning. Go to bed now.”
FRÖHLICHE WEIHNACHTEN
If an athlete gets athlete’s foot, what does an astronaut get? Missiletoe?
Schwarzwald Flieger (Black Forest Flyer) magazine of RCAF 4
IN THE PARK behind the Froelich house, the slide is only half as high because of the snow, and the swings are lodged in drifts. In backyards, small children skate, ankles collapsed inward, on postage-stamp rinks that their fathers have flooded. Claire McCarroll is among these, gingerly walking on her new blades toward her father’s outstretched hands — this is her first Canadian winter. In the McCarthys’ dining room, the heat from the Advent candles causes the brass angels to rotate on their wheel above, spinning a little faster every Sunday as one more flame is added. Madeleine and Mike take turns opening the tiny cardboard doors on the dog-eared December calendar that Mimi has stuck to the fridge for the fifth year in a row. The chocolates that came with it, hiding behind each day of the month, are long gone, but the tiny pictures remain: a dog, a candle, a Christmas tree…. All leading up to the twenty-fourth, when the Baby Jesus will be revealed. Across the top, in medieval script, are the words “Fröhliche Weihnachten.” Merry Christmas, from the land of “O Tannenbaum.” Mimi has tried to replace the calendar with a new one but the children will not hear of it.
Jack goes to the parent-teacher interviews with Mimi and feels lighter than he has in months. Mike is doing satisfactorily but is capable of more. “He needs to apply himself,” says Miss Crane. She is concerned that he is spending more time with Arnold Pinder than is perhaps advisable. But she likes Mike. She’s not supposed to have favourites, but he is definitely one. A nice boy. A good-hearted boy. Jack glances at Mimi. She’s beaming.
Madeleine may have got off on the wrong foot but she has come up from behind to excel — her report card was worth framing. Jack looks from the officious felt animals on the bulletin board to the bland teacher sitting before him. A limp grey man with watery eyes — a walrus moustache would not be amiss. He is the type who gets picked on in the schoolyard, then grows up to take his revenge in the classroom. Somehow Jack’s daughter is managing to learn from this clown. It only makes Jack more proud of her.
By the second week, Christmas cards have accumulated on strings hung between living room and dining room, and the stockings go up over the fireplace, their names embroidered by Mimi years ago in Alberta: Papa, Maman, Michel, Madeleine. On the mantelpiece the nativity scene is set out, nestled in cotton-wool snow. Bought in Germany in ’58, it is a tableau that Madeleine never tires of contemplating. An angel watches over the wooden stable, its floor strewn with straw; in and about it, painted ceramic cattle and sheep sleep and graze while Joseph and Mary kneel at either end of the empty manger — the Baby Jesus is hiding in the drawer of Maman’s sewing table until Christmas Day. Shepherds hover outside the stable, and Madeleine changes their positions daily, along with the animals. She is sorely tempted to add an army man or two of Mike’s to the scene. The Three Wise Men make their way on camel-back from the far end of the mantelpiece, but Madeleine improvises, making them cover vast distances across the dining-room table, the desert of the kitchen floor; stranding them on top of the fridge, the North Pole—musta taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Sorry, God. One of the Wise Men is black with a beard and a purple robe. He is her favourite. We three kings of Orient are, smoking on a rubber cigar, it was loaded, it exploded, now we’re on yonder star…. It’s impossible not to think of those words when contemplating the nativity scene. Madeleine banishes blasphemy by thinking of the Baby Jesus, for whom she is filled with a fervent love. She kneels before the sewing table, bows her head against the drawer where He lies waiting to be born, and tears come to her eyes as she prays that this time no one will hurt Him.
The house begins to smell a lot like Christmas. Mimi has been busy baking: shortbreads, icebox cookies, sugar cookies, “porkpies”—iced date tarts that resemble their millinerial namesake. The kids use the cookie cutters to make bells, stars and snowmen, decorating them with bits of green and red maraschino cherries. Festive tins pile up on the counters, wax paper peeking out from beneath the lids. Mimi takes the first of les meat-pies from the oven — spicy and mouthwatering, the Québécois call them tourtières—then gets to work on les crêpes râpées. At some point she will call everyone down to the basement to take a stir of the Christmas cake batter — it has been fermenting since November.
Mimi and Jack read Madeleine’s letter to Santa Claus and laugh out loud. Their little girl wants a cap gun and holster “or any kind of gun,” a skateboard and a walkie-talkie. There is a polite PS reminding Santa that she has enough nice dolls which he has been kind enough to bring her in the past.
Jack puts up the Christmas lights with a minimum of swearing under his breath, borrowing a ladder from Henry Froelich and counting the burn-outs to see how many bulbs he’ll need to pick up at Canadian Tire. He takes the kids to get a tree from the temporary pine forest set up at the Exeter Fairgrounds. Thick flakes fall as though on cue from Frank Capra. They pick one that is not quite perfect, pained at the thought that this brave yet blighted tree might not be taken home and loved this Christmas. The bare patch can always go against the wall.
Jack digs out the tree-stand, which he threatens each year to throw away, it clearly having been designed “by a Frenchman” for maximum frustration, and, enlisting his son’s help, performs the annual feat of engineering — shimming, trimming, sawing and straightening. “Careful, Jack, I don’t want you looking like a pirate again for Christmas.” He shakes his head, mock-rueful, as they recall the time he was poked in his good eye by a spruce needle and wound up wearing a patch till New Year’s. That was the year they all had the flu and Madeleine was teething. “That was one of the nicest Christmases ever, remember, Missus?” He kisses her. She says, “It’s still too far to the right.” He puts the electric star on top, strings the lights, plugs it all in and his wife and kids applaud.
Two Saturdays before Christmas, the family goes into London. They have split up, Jack taking Madeleine to buy a present for her mother and Mimi taking Michel to buy for his father. They are to meet up again across from the Laura Secord’s in front of Simpson’s, and trade. Madeleine buys a ceramic frog for her mother, its mouth open wide to hold a pot scrubber.
The street lights come on and, with them, the electric stars and giant candles that arch overhead and cast a multicoloured glow on the crowds below. Carols play over a loudspeaker mounted at the entrance to the market building, Hark the herald angels sing…. Madeleine holds her father’s hand in its huge black glove, and the two of them gaze in the Simpson’s window, where toys ride a train through a winter wonderland, teddy bears skate on a frozen pond, and a jazz combo of cats plays beneath a Christmas tree.
She chooses her words carefully. “Some kids in my class don’t believe in Santa Claus.”