Christmas in My Heart

by Joe Wheeler

  And suddenly this Christmas pageant became different from all others.

  “Don’t go, Joseph,” Wally called out. “Bring Mary back.” And Wallace Purling’s face grew into a bright smile. “You can have my room.”

  Some people in town thought that the pageant had been ruined. Yet there were others—many, many others—who considered it the most Christmas of all Christmas pageants they had ever seen.

  The Gold and

  Ivory Tablecloth

  HOWARD C. SCHADE

  If this story were fiction, editors would reject it as being too implausible, too coincidental, to have ever happened. Yet these storm-induced events did occur, a number of years after Hitler’s armies had ravaged Europe.

  Of true stories of Christmas, few are treasured and reread more than this.

  At Christmastime men and women everywhere gather in their churches to wonder anew at the greatest miracle the world has ever known. But the story I like best to recall was not a miracle—not exactly.

  It happened to a pastor who was very young. His church was very old. Once, long ago, it had flourished. Famous men had preached from its pulpit, prayed before its altar. Rich and poor alike had worshiped there and built it beautifully. Now the good days had passed from the section of town where it stood. But the pastor and his young wife believed in their run-down church. They felt that with paint, hammer, and faith they could get it in shape. Together they went to work.

  But late in December a severe storm whipped through the river valley, and the worst blow fell on the little church—a huge chunk of rain-soaked plaster fell out of the inside wall just behind the altar. Sorrowfully the pastor and his wife swept away the mess, but they couldn’t hide the ragged hole.

  The pastor looked at it and had to remind himself quickly, “Thy will be done!” But his wife wept, “Christmas is only two days away!”

  That afternoon the dispirited couple attended the auction held for the benefit of a youth group. The auctioneer opened a box and shook out of its folds a handsome gold-and-ivory lace tablecloth. It was a magnificent item, nearly 15 feet long. But it, too, dated from a long-vanished era. Who, today, had any use for such a thing? There were a few half-hearted bids. Then the pastor was seized with what he thought was a great idea. He bid it in for $6.50.

  He carried the cloth back to the church and tacked it up on the wall behind the altar. It completely hid the hole! And the extraordinary beauty of its shimmering handwork cast a fine, holiday glow over the chancel. It was a great triumph. Happily he went back to preparing his Christmas sermon.

  Just before noon on the day of Christmas Eve, as the pastor was opening the church, he noticed a woman standing in the cold at the bus stop.

  “The bus won’t be here for 40 minutes!” he called, and invited her into the church to get warm.

  She told him that she had come from the city that morning to be interviewed for a job as governess to the children of one of the wealthy families in town but she had been turned down. A war refugee, her English was imperfect.

  The woman sat down in a pew and chafed her hands and rested. After a while she dropped her head and prayed. She looked up as the pastor began to adjust the great gold-and-ivory lace cloth across the hole. She rose suddenly and walked up the steps of the chancel. She looked at the tablecloth. The pastor smiled and started to tell her about the storm damage, but she didn’t seem to listen. She took up a fold of the cloth and rubbed it between her fingers.

  “It is mine!” she said. “It is my banquet cloth!” She lifted up a corner and showed the surprised pastor that there were initials monogrammed on it. “My husband had the cloth made especially for me in Brussels! There could not be another like it.”

  For the next few minutes the woman and the pastor talked excitedly together. She explained that she was Viennese; that she and her husband had opposed the Nazis and decided to leave the country. They were advised to go separately. Her husband put her on a train for Switzerland. They planned that he would join her as soon as he could arrange to ship their household goods across the border.

  She never saw him again. Later she heard that he had died in a concentration camp.

  “I have always felt that it was my fault—to leave without him,” she said. “Perhaps these years of wandering have been my punishment!”

  The pastor tried to comfort her, urged her to take the cloth with her. She refused. Then she went away.

  As the church began to fill on Christmas Eve, it was clear that the cloth was going to be a great success. It had been skillfully designed to look its best by candlelight.

  After the service, the pastor stood at the doorway; many people told him that the church looked beautiful. One gentle-faced, middle-aged man—he was the local clock-and-watch repairman—looked rather puzzled.

  “It is strange,” he said in his soft accent. “Many years ago my wife—God rest her—and I owned such a cloth. In our home in Vienna, my wife put it on the table”—and here he smiled—“only when the bishop came to dinner!”

  The pastor suddenly became very excited. He told the jeweler about the woman who had been in church earlier in the day.

  The startled jeweler clutched the pastor’s arm. “Can it be? Does she live?”

  Together the two got in touch with the family who had interviewed her. Then, in the pastor’s car they started for the city. And as Christmas Day was born, this man and his wife—who had been separated through so many saddened Yuletides—were reunited.

  To all who heard this story, the joyful purpose of the storm that had knocked a hole in the wall of the church was now quite clear. Of course, people said it was a miracle, but I think you will agree it was the season for it!

  A Father for

  Christmas

  AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  Better than any other tale I know, this old story hammers home a great truth: the line of demarcation between success and failure in life is paper thin, as thin as the line between happiness and tragedy. Quite often the difference is nothing more than a kind heart and a realization that each of us is our brother’s keeper.

  Sheriff John Charles Olsen let out a sigh so hefty it blew an apple core clear off his desk. There’d been times in his life when he’d felt worse. The night he’d spent in the swamp behind the Sundquist place with a broken leg and about a million mosquitoes for company was one such time. But there’d never been a time when he’d wanted less to be a sheriff.

  “Are you deaf?” Mart Dahlberg demanded.

  Sheriff Olsen looked across at where his deputy was typing out letters in his usual neat and fast way. “Did you say something?”

  “Only three times. Didn’t you promise the fellow you’d be out there by noon?”

  “It ain’t noon yet.”

  “It will be by the time you get there.”

  Sheriff Olsen hauled himself, slow and heavy, to his feet.

  “Sure you don’t want me to go along?” Mart asked, and his voice was gentler sounding.

  The sheriff shook his head. “No, not much stuff out there. Just four chairs and a table and the kids’ clothes and some bedding.”

  “Well, I wish you’d get started,” Mart said. “You got to be back here and into your Santa Claus outfit by three, remember.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” the sheriff answered. He sounded snappish, but he couldn’t help it.

  Mart got up from his desk. “Look, John,” he said, “take it easy. Folks get evicted from their homes all the time.”

  “Not a week before Christmas, they don’t,” the sheriff growled.

  He slammed shut the office door and went out of the courthouse to where his car was parked. He gave a quick look at how the trailer was fastened, then he got into the car and slammed that door shut, too.

  Maybe it wasn’t anybody’s fault what had happened. But it made the sheriff feel awfully queer in his stomach to have to move three little kids out of their home just before he was going to dress up in a Santa Claus outfit and hand out gifts to
other kids at the annual Christmas celebration!

  Sheriff Olsen started up the engine and turned on the heater. Then he turned it off and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his mitten. Likely a man with more brains than the sheriff had could have fixed things right for Stephen Reade.

  Sam Merske called Stephen Reade a deadbeat and a phony, but that was because Reade hadn’t made a good tenant farmer. Two years ago, when Reade had rented the farm from Merske, Merske had called Reade a fine, upstanding personality.

  Sheriff Olsen had argued for months with Merske about Reade and the kids, figuring that all Reade needed was another summer to get things going right. But Sam Merske was a businessman and he expected his farm to produce and make money for him. Finally he’d taken Reade to court.

  After that, the sheriff had done his arguing with Judge Martinson, but the judge said that Sam Merske had been very generous and patient with Reade, and that it was understandable Sam’s wanting to get a competent man settled on his farm before spring came.

  “This man, Reade,” the judge had said, “is obviously not fitted to farm. That has been proven to my satisfaction, not only by his inability to make his rent payments but also by the condition the county agent tells me the farm is in. Let us not fog our judgment, John, with undue sentimentality. It will be far better for both Reade and his children if we face the issue squarely.”

  It wasn’t Stephen Reade’s fault what had happened. You have to be kind of raised to it to know what to do when your cow takes sick or the weather mildews your raspberries. All his life since he was a kid, Reade had been in the selling business in New York City, going from door to door, first with magazine subscriptions, and then with stockings, and finally with vacuum cleaners. It took hard work and brains and a lot more courage than the sheriff himself had to go around ringing doorbells and asking strange women to buy things from you. But Stephen Reade had sold enough to support a wife and three children.

  After the third child was born, Mrs. Reade had been sick all the time. She’d been raised on a farm in Oregon, and she figured living in a big city was what made her sick. So when she knew she wasn’t going to live, she’d made her husband promise he’d take the kids to the country.

  Reade had promised faithfully, and after his wife was gone he’d taken what was left of their savings and headed for Oregon. He’d gone as far as the bus depot in St. Paul when he’d read an ad. The ad had said that anyone with initiative and enterprise wanting to rent an A-one farm should apply to Sam Merske, proprietor of the Merske Dry Goods Store in Minnewashta County.

  Sam had demanded three months’ rent in advance, and that was all he’d ever gotten out of Reade. The cow and the chickens had taken all the leftover cash that Reade had, and the cow hadn’t lived very long.

  Johanna Olsen, the sheriff’s wife, had bought all her eggs off of Reade for two months. After that, for another two months she’d bought as many as Reade had to sell. And, after that, there weren’t enough hens left to give the Reade youngsters an egg each for their breakfasts.

  The plan was to move the Reade family into the two empty rooms above the Hovander Grain and Feed Store. It wasn’t a permanent arrangement, because Hovander didn’t like the idea. “Eight days is all they can stay. I ain’t no charitable institution, and I wouldn’t do the favor for nobody but you, John.”

  But the eight days would get the Reade kids through Christmas.

  Sheriff Olsen brought the car and the trailer up alongside the farmhouse. There was a big railed-in porch running around three sides of the house and you could see how a widower with three children would have liked the looks of the porch the minute he saw it—forgetting how hard a big old house was to heat.

  The sheriff knocked at the door. After a minute he heard someone running and then Ellen’s voice said, “Robbie, don’t go near that door; I’m supposed to answer.” In another minute, the door opened a crack.

  Sheriff Olsen said, “ ’Lo, Ellen.”

  Ellen said, “Hello, Mr. Olsen,” but she didn’t smile back. “My father’s out for the present, but you’re welcome to wait in the kitchen. It’s warmest there.”

  Sheriff Olsen sat down on one of the four chairs pulled up to a card table. On the table was a bundle tied up in a blanket; near the back door was a barrel covered with newspapers, and three suitcases fastened with ropes.

  The sheriff said, “You sure been busy.”

  “I helped with everything,” Robbie said.

  Ellen said, “The stove belongs to Mr. Merske, and so do the beds and the clock. But the chairs and the table are all paid for and so they belong to us.”

  Sheriff Olsen looked at the clock. “Did your pa say when he’d be back?”

  “He’s gone for something,” Ellen said.

  Robbie said, “Dad’s gone to get us a surprise. Letty thinks he’s buying her a doll, but Dad said what he’s getting for us is heaps more important than anything you can buy in a store.”

  Sheriff Olsen smiled at Letty and she came over and put her head down on his knee. She was about 4 and she wasn’t worried yet about how things were in the world.

  When it got to be about half past 12, the sheriff said, “Maybe we should all drive down the road a ways and give a lift to your pa!”

  Ellen slid down from the window sill. “Are you getting restless, Mr. Olsen?” she asked.

  “Kinda.”

  “Well, when you get awful restless, I’m supposed to give you a letter.” She started toward the parlor door. Then she turned. “But first, you have to be awful restless.”

  “I am awful restless,” he answered with a worried look on his kind face.

  In half a minute, she was back with an envelope. Inside was a sheet of paper that had been written on with pencil:

  “To the Sheriff of Minnewashta County: I, Stephen Reade, being of sound mind and body, do herewith declare that I relinquish all legal claim to my three children, Ellen, Robert, and Letitia Reade. I do this as my Christmas gift to them, so that they may be legally adopted by some family that will take care of them. I herewith swear never to make myself known to their new parents. They are good children and will make their new parents happy.

  Yours very truly,

  Your grateful friend, Stephen Reade.”

  “Does it tell about my doll?” Letty asked, jumping up and down.

  “Does my father say when he’ll be back, Mr. Olsen?” Ellen asked. She was standing very straight at the sink, making little pleats in her dress. “Does he?”

  Sheriff Olsen looked at the clock, and then at his watch. There’d be a freight train pulling out of the station in 38 minutes, and if Reade hadn’t hitched a ride on a truck, he’d be waiting to bum one on the freight. But you couldn’t chase after a deserting father with the fellow’s kids in the back of your car.

  “Does he?” Ellen asked again.

  Sheriff Olsen gave a big hearty smile. “Well, what do you know about that? Your dad’s changed his plans. He wants you should stay the afternoon with my wife. So, quick now, put on your coats and caps and boots while I unhitch the trailer.”

  “But aren’t we taking our chairs and things, Mr. Olsen,” Ellen asked.

  “I’ll come back for ’em later. Where’s your boots, Letty?”

  “Mr. Olsen, I don’t think my father would want us to leave without taking our furniture with us.”

  “Look, my wife’s going to take you to the Christmas celebration and you’ll get presents from Santa Claus and everything. Only we gotta hurry, see?”

  “Daddy’s getting me a present,” Letty said.

  Robbie shouted, “I think we’d better wait here for Daddy.”

  “There’ll be a Christmas tree,” the sheriff said, “and hot cocoa to drink and peanut butter sandwiches. Robbie, you got brains, see if you can find Letty’s mittens. I got her boots here.”

  Next Ellen spoke up: “We aren’t supposed to go to the Christmas celebration, Mr. Olsen. My father told us it’s just for the children who live in town.
”

  “Well, that’s the big surprise your pa’s got for you. Santa Claus wants the three Reade kids to be special guests. Letty, stick your thumb in the hole that was meant for your thumb in this mitten.”

  “I want my daddy,” Letty squealed. “I want my daddy to take me to see Santa Claus.”

  “She’s scared because Daddy isn’t here,” Robbie said. “Aren’t you scared ’cause Daddy isn’t here, Letty?”

  Sheriff Olsen grabbed hold of Letty. “How good can you ride piggyback?” With that, he rushed her off to the car.

  Going over the slippery road with the three children, the sheriff had to drive slowly and carefully back into town. Right away, when the sheriff honked, Johanna came running out of the house.

  “Johanna, they haven’t eaten yet. And could you please phone down to the Christmas committee and tell them that you’re bringing three extra children so they will have time to get their gifts wrapped right.”

  Johanna opened the back door to the car, and the three Reade youngsters moved out toward the smile she gave them like they were three new-hatched chicks heading for the feel of something warm.

  “Wow!” said Johanna. “Am I ever lucky! There’s a whole big chocolate cake in the kitchen, and me worrying who was going to help to frost and eat it.”

  With the kids out of the car, the sheriff drove kind of crazy. Once he was past the courthouse and heading for the station, the traffic thinned out and there wasn’t anybody’s neck to worry about except his own.

  The freight was in, and the sheriff drove straight up onto the platform. Lindahl, who was stationmaster, gave a yelp, but when he saw it was the sheriff, he yelled, “What’s he look like?” and started running down the length of the train.

  Sheriff Olsen headed east toward the engine, and found where somebody had once been crouching down in the snow on the embankment.