by Jeff Guinn
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
CHAPTER One
CHAPTER Two
CHAPTER Three
CHAPTER Four
CHAPTER Five
CHAPTER Six
CHAPTER Seven
CHAPTER Eight
CHAPTER Nine
CHAPTER Ten
CHAPTER Eleven
CHAPTER Twelve
CHAPTER Thirteen
CHAPTER Fourteen
CHAPTER Fifteen
CHAPTER Sixteen
CHAPTER Seventeen
CHAPTER Eighteen
CHAPTER Nineteen
CHAPTER Twenty
CHAPTER Twenty-one
CHAPTER Twenty-two
CHAPTER Twenty-three
CHAPTER Twenty-four
Lars’s Candy Cane Pie
Acknowledgements
Further Reading
ALSO BY JEFF GUINN
The Great Santa Search
The Autobiography of Santa Claus
Our Land Before We Die:
The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro
JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN
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New York
JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN
Published by the Penguin Group
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First trade paperback edition 2006
Copyright © 2005 by 24Words, LLC
Illustrations © 1995 by Mark Hoffer
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Guinn, Jeff.
How Mrs. Claus saved Christmas/as told to Jeff Guinn.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-11892-4
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FOR SARA CARDER Thanks
We had just settled into our seats that evening, each of us enjoying a thick wedge of Candy Cane Pie, a special recipe by a wonderful Norwegian pastry chef named Lars. He makes the most fabulous desserts you can imagine, and many more you can’t.
Foreword
WE NEVER STOP WORKING at the North Pole. Though children all over the world only expect to find presents from us on one of three mornings—December 6, December 25, or January 6—we need the rest of the year to design and build their toys. In fact, we work just as hard during the spring, summer, and fall as we do around those wonderful winter holidays of St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, and the Epiphany. Most people, I find, don’t realize this. Over the years, I’ve seen thousands of cartoons about where Santa likes to take his vacations. These are often funny drawings of me on the beach sipping a drink through a straw, or at a baseball game enjoying a hot dog. And it’s true I enjoy baseball and hot dogs, but I mostly do so in my den at the North Pole, watching the game on television and eating the hot dog from a tray on my lap. Beaches are less enticing. As someone who is well over seventeen hundred years old and, I admit, perhaps a few pounds overweight, wearing a bathing suit in public is not something I’m eager to do.
Besides, there simply isn’t leisure time to spend at the beach. There are no magic North Pole buttons we can push to make toys instantly appear for every deserving girl and boy. I explained in a book I wrote about my life that there is a fair share of magic in what we do, but there’s plenty of hard work, too. Everyone living here at the North Pole—and there are hundreds of us—is kept very busy from the time we gather for breakfast each morning, at eight o’clock sharp, until about six or so in the evening, when there’s dinner and, afterward, well-deserved relaxation and fellowship until it’s time to go to bed.
Designed by the great inventor Leonardo da Vinci, our North Pole home is a complex series of buildings and tunnels mostly underneath the snow, so that no one in planes flying overhead will notice us. The long, well-lighted workshops and assembly lines are separated from everyone’s private living quarters by a large dining hall and several other rooms where comfortable chairs and sofas and widescreen televisions and well-stocked bookshelves make it pleasant for friends to gather and chat, read, or watch movies. No one is required to be anywhere doing anything. It’s all very informal. Those who want quiet to enjoy their books can have complete peace in one place, while in another, dozens may be happily gathered to watch a hilarious film. Leonardo was careful to make each room soundproof, so that hearty laughter from one room does not disturb companionable silence in another.
Though everyone is free to choose what to do and whom to spend their evenings with, it often happens that one group is comprised of what we call “the old companions”—those of us who have been together longest in this eternal mission of helping everyone celebrate the joy and wonder of the holiday season. I’m never happier than when these very special people are gathered with me—Felix, the Roman slave who became my first companion; Attila, known through the ages as The Hun, and his wife, Dorothea; Arthur, the British war chief who, in legend, became celebrated as a king; St. Francis of Assisi, who wrote some of the first Christmas carols; Willie Skokan, the incomparable craftsman; Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, two great inventors and significant figures in world history; Sarah Kemble Knight, Felix’s wife, who wrote the very first book about traveling in America; Teddy Roosevelt, the former president of the United States; Amelia Earhart, the wonderful aviator; and Bill Pickett, the great cowboy who could wrestle any steer to the ground in a matter of seconds. And, of course, there’s the person I love and admire most of all, my wife, Layla, whose common sense and courage have inspired us during many challenging times.
Although we’ve known one another for a very long time, being together r
emains quite agreeable. Sometimes we don’t even get around to watching a movie or reading books at all, because someone tells a favorite story and then everyone else begins reminiscing about wonderful times or places or people. Even though we’ve heard these same stories hundreds or even thousands of time before, they’re still enjoyable. Felix, for instance, loves to tell about how he met George Washington and informed him that the German troops opposing him in the Revolutionary War would be spending Christmas night celebrating rather than guarding their camp. Based on this information, General Washington crossed the Delaware after dark on December 25, 1776, and took the Germans by surprise. Teddy Roosevelt is always ready to jump in and talk about his great adventures, including how he helped create eighteen national monuments. Leonardo might recall painting his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. Every so often, I’m coaxed into recounting my first days of gift-giving, when I was a bishop in the early Christian church and even before that, as a small boy whose dream it was to bring comfort to those in need. Actually, I need very little coaxing.
Everyone always seems to have a story to share, and occasionally that includes Layla. But on most evenings, she prefers sitting quietly and listening to others. It isn’t that she’s too shy to speak. As Layla has demonstrated throughout the sixteen centuries we’ve been married, if she feels there is something that ought to be said, she will say it, and always in her pleasant, practical way. Layla is so intelligent, and so perceptive—she was the one back in the 1100s who helped us decide we must give toys to children instead of food, because the food would soon be gone but the toys would be lasting reminders that someone cared enough about them to bring gifts. It was also my wife who suggested that we deliver these gifts on three special nights rather than randomly throughout the year, so that we would have time to properly prepare, but more important, to help keep holiday traditions alive. And it was Layla, in the middle 1640s, who saved Christmas.
That’s a story no one but Layla, Arthur, and I really knew until recently, when it came up by accident. We had not deliberately kept it a secret. For more than three and a half centuries, Layla simply didn’t feel like talking about these particular Christmas-related events, which have been mostly overlooked by historians. Oh, they get some of the basic facts right—for a while in England, celebrating Christmas was against the law, until finally the people protested and got their beloved holiday back again—but they have no idea of the important part Layla played in it.
None of our other North Pole companions did, either, until the night we sat down to watch a movie about one of history’s more controversial figures. I should perhaps explain how we came to watch this particular film. It is our custom to take turns selecting what movie will be watched. If, for instance, Ben Franklin chooses on one night, it will not be his turn again until each of the other “old companions” has had the chance to make a selection. Everyone’s choice is always honored, and it’s interesting to see who likes to watch what. You would think, for instance, that Bill Pickett would want movies about cowboys, but he loves those colorful films about a boy wizard named Harry Potter. St. Francis likes the Disney cartoon Peter Pan; we’ve worn out several cassette copies, though the DVD version has lasted longer. Attila would watch Some Like It Hot every night, if he could. Christmasthemed movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story are always popular. None of us like films that contain a great deal of violence. We are people who love peace, not war. But movies based on history are always interesting. After all, some of us might have been there.
We all find it amusing that Arthur enjoys movies about himself. There are so many, most based on the colorful but inaccurate myth that Arthur was a British king who lived in a magical place called Camelot and fought evildoers with the help of a great wizard named Merlin. Arthur always claims to be embarrassed by such embellishment. In fact, he’d been a war chief in the 500s who, for a while, helped hold off Saxon invaders before they finally overran Britain. Layla, Felix, Attila, Dorothea, and I had found him lying wounded in a barn. We nursed him back to health, and he joined us in our gift-giving mission.
But books were written about mythical King Arthur, and poems and songs, too. When movies were invented (by Leonardo, Willie Skokan, and Ben Franklin, though they let others take the credit) there were soon films that also emphasized the Arthur legend rather than real history. We sometimes watch these at the North Pole, always at Arthur’s suggestion. He tries to make it seem that he isn’t secretly flattered; “Let’s watch this new exaggeration,” Arthur might say. “How silly it is.” But his eyes stay glued to the huge widescreen television on which our movies are played.
One of the better versions, perhaps because of its wonderful songs, is a musical called Camelot, based on a fine book, The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. The theme of the movie, and the book, is that more is always accomplished by kindness than by violence. An actor named Richard Harris plays King Arthur in the movie. He does it quite well, though he doesn’t look exactly like Arthur. He wears a beard in the movie, and Arthur never had a beard.
But a few weeks after we saw Camelot for perhaps the twentieth time, when Arthur’s turn came around again he suggested we watch Richard Harris in another movie. We had just settled into our seats that evening, each of us enjoying a thick wedge of Candy Cane Pie, a special recipe by a wonderful Norwegian pastry chef named Lars. He makes the most fabulous desserts you can imagine, and many more you can’t. We were thrilled when he agreed to join us at the North Pole. And, afterward, some of us began to put on a bit of additional weight, me perhaps most of all.
“This movie has more real history than Camelot,” Arthur explained, setting down his plate of pie. “It’s called Cromwell, and it’s about the British Civil War in the 1640s.”
“You were in England during that time, weren’t you?” asked Sarah Kemble Knight. Sarah hadn’t joined us until 1727, so she often requested such clarification.
“I was, along with Layla and Leonardo,” Arthur replied. “That was the same time that Santa and Felix were trying to introduce Christmas to the colonies in America.” Before he started the movie, he talked a little about Oliver Cromwell, a leader of the revolution against the British king. Leonardo added a few comments. Layla didn’t. I thought she looked rather sad.
Then we lowered the lights and the film began. Richard Harris, playing Cromwell, stormed across the screen, pounding his fist and shouting. He did this in scene after scene, until after one particularly loud episode Layla spoke for the first time.
“He wasn’t like that at all,” she said. Though her voice was low, everyone instantly paid attention, because it was unusual for Layla to comment during a movie.
“You knew Oliver Cromwell?” Teddy Roosevelt piped up. “I had no idea, Layla. Did you actually speak to him?”
Arthur paused the DVD and reached over to turn on the lights.
“Did Layla ever speak to Cromwell?” he replied. “Why, several times! If you knew the entire story—”
“There’s no need to tell it,” Layla interrupted. “I’m sorry I said anything. Please, Arthur, start the movie again.”
But now everyone was curious. “It surely seems like there’s something interesting here,” Bill Pickett remarked in his slow drawl. “I’d rather hear about it than watch the movie.” Several of our other companions loudly agreed.
Dorothea, who has been one of Layla’s closest friends for over fifteen hundred years, quickly said, “If Layla doesn’t want to talk about it, she shouldn’t have to. Though, of course, I’d be very happy to listen if she does.”
Layla frowned. I could tell that there were things she was tempted to say, but for more than three hundred years she had never talked about her time with Cromwell, except to me in 1700 when we reunited back in America. Some memories can be painful as well as happy at the same time, and this, I knew, was one of those instances.
“You hardly ever tell stories, Layla,” Amelia Earhart pointed out. “It’s usually Felix, or Teddy Roosevelt, or
Santa. Please, take a turn now. You say that Cromwell wasn’t loud, that he didn’t shout like the actor in the movie?”
“No, I never heard him shout,” Layla said, choosing her words carefully. “He was a determined man, someone who I completely disagreed with about Christmas. Oliver Cromwell thought Christmas was sinful, and tried to end it forever. But he wasn’t evil, you see. That was what made it harder when—”
“When what?” Amelia urged.
Layla looked at me, a question in her eyes. I knew she was silently asking whether I thought she should continue. It wasn’t a matter of me granting permission. Layla never asks, or needs, my permission to do anything. But she values my opinion, as I always do hers.
“I think this might be a story that should finally be told, Layla,” I said, looking around the room. Most of our good, dear friends were perched on the edges of their seats, watching Layla and obviously hoping she would tell whatever the story was about Oliver Cromwell and his attempt to end Christmas. “I’ve often said that it’s wrong for me always to get credit for almost every good thing in Christmas history. Perhaps everyone here should know about your incredible accomplishment, too.”
“I really did very little,” Layla replied. “It was the others—Elizabeth and Alan Hayes, for instance, and all those brave apprentices in London, and Avery Sabine, though he surely didn’t mean to help us. And . . . and—”
“And Sara,” Arthur added, his voice very soft.
“And Sara most of all,” Layla agreed. She sat quietly for a moment, thinking hard. “All right. I’ll tell the story, if everyone wants to hear it.”
“Please do,” begged Teddy Roosevelt, who usually preferred telling stories to listening. “Who were Elizabeth and Alan Hayes, Layla, and what about apprentices and this Avery fellow? Who was Sara, who seems so special to you? And why haven’t you mentioned any of this before?”
