The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas Read online

  —Please, God, I’m not bargaining, I’m not bribing or anything, I’m just asking, Please let Daddy get home. If I knew how to offer my whole self I would, but I don’t know how, so please let Daddy get home, please let …

  Then, just as the words began to jumble themselves up in my mind, I saw something in the wide expanse of snow, somewhere near where the curve of the road ought to be. A light. “Mother! John! Suzy!” They all came running to the window.

  “It’s a flashlight,” John said.

  “Snowshoes!” Mother cried. “John, run to the garage and see if Daddy took his snowshoes!”

  John hurried to the kitchen door and in a minute came back, grinning happily. “They’re gone.”

  The light came closer and closer and soon we could see Daddy, his head and shoulders covered with snow. His snowshoes moved steadily and regularly over the white ground. We ran tumbling out to the garage and flung our arms around him, and the dogs jumped up on him and barked in greeting.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Let me get my snowshoes off!” He handed the snowshoes to John, who hung them up. Then he stamped his feet and shook, and snow tumbled off him. The dogs dashed out into the snow, came whirling back into the garage, and shook off even more snow. “Come along,” Daddy said. “Let’s get in out of the cold.”

  When we got indoors Daddy kissed Mother. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to get home.”

  Daddy said, “You didn’t think I’d leave you now, did you?”

  And Mother said, “I’ve been having contractions off and on all day. Oh, I am so glad you’re home!”

  Daddy put another log on the fire. Outdoors the snow was still falling. Indoors it was warm and cozy. The star lit up the little stable, and Daddy went to the white cardboard box and took out the tiny wax figure of the baby. “I think we can put him in the manger now.”

  Mother said, “We might as well have the reading now, too, because this is all the Christmas Eve service we’re going to get.”

  John went into the living room and turned on the Christmas tree lights so that there was the beauty of the Christmas tree indoors and the Christmas tree outdoors, and Daddy sat by the fire and read us the Christmas story. I looked at the angel on top of the indoor Christmas tree and I felt peaceful and happy.

  When we had finished dinner and were nearly through with the dishes, Mother gave a funny little gasp and said to Daddy, “How are you going to get me to the hospital?”

  Daddy laughed. “Upstairs is as far as I’m going to get you tonight.” He looked at us. “Children, I’m going to ask you to finish the dishes and clean up the kitchen.” Suddenly he sounded like a doctor, not just Daddy. “John, put on a full kettle to boil. Blizzards don’t ask anybody when they should come, and neither do babies.”

  He put his arm about Mother and they went upstairs.

  “What about dessert?” Suzy asked. “We were going to have dessert after we’d done the dishes.”

  “If you’re really interested in dessert, I’ll get you some ice cream out of the freezer,” John said.

  After all, Suzy is a very little girl. She ate a large bowl of ice cream.

  When the kitchen was all cleaned up, Daddy came downstairs. He carried the Christmas stockings and he told us to hang them carefully at the living room fireplace. “You’d be staying up late tonight anyhow, so please just be good. Vicky, keep that kettle hot for me, and feed the cats and put them down in the cellar for the night.”

  The snow beat against the windows. The wind rattled the shutters. In spite of her nap Suzy got sleepy and curled up on the living room sofa. I went to the stove. “I’d better make the cocoa to put on the mantelpiece with the cookies for Santa Claus.”

  “Make enough for us while you’re at it,” John said.

  We drank two, then three cups of cocoa. We tiptoed out to the storeroom where we’d hidden our presents for Mother and Daddy and put them under the tree. Time seemed to stretch out and out and Daddy didn’t come back downstairs. The dogs lay in front of the fire and snored. Suddenly Mr. Rochester, the Great Dane, pricked up his ears. John and I listened, but we didn’t hear anything. At the top of the cellar stairs a cat meowed. Mr. Rochester sat up and raised his head; his tail thumped against the floor.

  Then we did hear something, something unmistakable, loud and clear. A cry. A baby’s cry.

  I started to get up, but John said, “Wait.”

  In a little while Daddy came bounding down the stairs. He was beaming. “You have a little brother, children!” He took the kettle and hurried back up the stairs, calling, “You can come up in a few minutes. Wait.”

  The baby cried again, a lusty yell.

  I went to the crèche. The light from the star shone down on the stable. The elephant and the pig and her piglets seemed to have moved in closer. The baby lay on his bed of straw.

  “Listen.” John held up his hand. Across the fields came the sound of the clock in the church steeple striking midnight. “Let’s wake Suzy up, and tell her.”

  Suzy sleeps soundly and it took us a long time to wake her properly. By the time she realized what had happened, Daddy came back downstairs.

  “You can come up now, for just a minute, children. But Mother’s tired, and the baby’s asleep, so be very quiet,”

  We tiptoed up the stairs and into the big bedroom. Mother was lying in the big bed and smiling. In the crook of her arm was a little bundle. We tiptoed closer. The bundle was our baby brother. His face was all puckered and rosy. His eyes were closed tight. He had a wisp of dampish hair. He had a tiny bud of a mouth. One little fist was close to his cheek. We stood and stared at him. We were too excited and awed to speak.

  Mother asked, “Isn’t he beautiful?” and we all nodded.

  Then Daddy shooed us out. “All right. Time for bed, everybody.”

  John went off to his room, and Suzy and I to ours. When we had undressed and brushed our teeth and Suzy was in bed, I stood at the window. The snow had stopped. The ground was a great soft blanket of white, broken by the dark lines of trees and the gay colors of the outdoor tree. The sky was dark and clear and crusted with stars. I watched and watched and there was one star that was brighter and more sparkling than any of the others.

  The Christmas star.

  Mother was home. Daddy was home. Our baby brother was home. We were all together.

  I whispered, “Thank you.”

  And the light shone right into my heart.

  FOR OLDER READERS

  The Austin Family Chronicles

  Meet the Austins

  The Moon by Night

  The Young Unicorns

  A Ring of Endless Light

  Troubling a Star

  Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007) was the author of the beloved Austin Family Chronicles, including the Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Among her many books for children and adults are A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal, and the other four books of the Time Quintet.

  Jill Weber has designed and illustrated numerous books for children. She lives on Frajil Farms in New Hampshire.

  Farrar Straus Giroux

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York 10010

  www.fsgkidsbooks.com

  Text copyright © 1984 by Crosswicks, Ltd.

  Pictures copyright © 2010 by Jill Weber

  All rights reserved

  www.fsgkidsbooks.com

  Text designed by Robert C. Olsson

  eISBN 9781429945646

  First eBook Edition : August 2011

  An earlier version of this text was published

  in 1964 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  L’Engle, Madeleine.

  The twenty-four days before Christmas : an Austin family story /

  Madeleine L’Engle; pictures by Jill Weber.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Seven-year-old Vicky Austin recounts the events of the twenty-fo
ur days before Christmas, as she prepares for her role as an angel in the Christmas Pageant and prays that her mother will not be in the hospital for Christmas having a new baby.

  [1. Christmas—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction.] I. Weber, Jill, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.L5385Tw 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009041434

  Christmas card art © 2011 by Crosswicks, Ltd.

  “Christmas in New York” © 2011 by Crosswicks, Ltd.

  Christmas Cards by Madeleine L’Engle

  Christmas in New York

  Christmas and New York are for me almost synonymous—not usual, I know, but I was born in New York, and my first twelve Christmases were in my hometown. I’ve had wonderful Christmases in more typical places—a small house nestled at the foot of the French Alps, an old New England farmhouse—but there is something special about Christmas in New York.

  When I was a child we lived on East 82nd Street, and the glory of Christmas was Park Avenue, with the trees lit in both directions as far as I could see. With my parents I would walk up and down this great and beautiful avenue, admiring the decorated trees. They were more garish then, with lights of every color. For the last several years now, they have been lit with tiny white lights. If I had to choose which is the more beautiful, I couldn’t.

  And Christmas carols: from our apartment we could hear brass bands playing loudly, slightly out of tune, all the old favorites, and I saw nothing ironic in “Silent Night” played fortissimo. The musicians were usually German, victims one way or another of the First World War. Often I would be given pennies wrapped in tissue paper, the front room windows would be opened, and I would be allowed to toss the pennies down. A blessing, in German, would waft up.

  “Poor things,” the Irish cook would say of the German players.

  I didn’t understand the ways of nations then any better than I do now, but I took the ambiguities far more for granted, and enjoyed tossing down the pennies. My father was ultimately to die of injuries sustained in that war, but he, too, seemed to think the musicians were “poor things,” and gave me extra pennies to throw down.

  Across the street and a few houses toward Park Avenue was a synagogue in front of which (except in snow or rain) sat old men with long beards and dark clothes and hats. I thought they must look the way people looked in Jesus’ time, and I felt a deep reverence toward them, though the Irish cook said they were very serious men and I must never disturb them or ask them questions. I decided secretly that I would wait till I was twelve, which was how old Jesus was when he questioned the elders in the temple. But when I was twelve I was more inhibited, and in any case that was when we moved to Europe for several years.

  Less ambiguous than the German musicians were (and still are) the Salvation Army Santa Clauses, Santa somehow having cloned himself so that he could ring his brass bell on several street corners simultaneously.

  And of course there’s the great tree at Rockefeller Center, which meant a special trip downtown on the Fifth Avenue bus, a double-decker that cost a dime—twice as much as the other busses.

  Special trips: Christmas is the time when New Yorkers leave their own little parts of the city and “go abroad”—uptown, downtown, east side, west side. Some go for shopping, but that’s not my idea of Christmas. I like to have my presents all bought, if not wrapped, by the beginning of the academic year, so that I’m free to enjoy Christmas with its music and lights and sometimes even snow.

  After college I hurried back to New York as soon as I could get there, and shared an apartment with several aspiring friends. Like most young artists, we were poor as church mice but had to have a Christmas tree, so we got a little one which we decorated with small round paper-lace doilies threaded through with red ribbons. It was amazingly effective and cost us only a few dollars. Like children, we went to Wanamaker’s to see Santa Claus, and though we were too old to sit on his lap and ask for presents (“Let me get a real part in a play so I can get my Equity card.” “Let my book be published.” “Let me be booked for a concert”), we still made our wishes and were as thrilled as though we were ten years younger.

  Are people truly friendlier at Christmastime? It does seem that they speak to each other more freely, that there is more laughter. I remember one Christmas after I was married when we were living in the Village, on Tenth Street. My actor husband was in Boston with a play, and I strapped our year-and-a-half-old baby in her stroller and walked for blocks, pausing at each decorated tree and watching the passersby smile in delight as the baby stretched her arms out to the lights. There is something contagious about joy. Eleven years or so later, we returned to New York with three children after nearly a decade of living in the country, real country, where there were more cows than people. Our apartment was on the Upper West Side and Christmas in the city was something entirely new for them. One evening while their father was at the theater the children and I took the Fifth Avenue bus (now a single-decker) and rode it all the way to Washington Square, to see the tree there and all the trees on the way down and back. As we left the bus, our seven-year-old turned his shining face to the bus driver: “Oh, thank you! Thank you for a wonderful drive!” There was much appreciative laughter, and the bus driver actually blushed, saying, “You’re very welcome, kiddie. Come again.”

  New York gets a bad press, but New Yorkers respond to friendliness and gratitude as readily as anyone else. Ask someone on the street for directions, and unless you get “I’m sorry, I’m a stranger here myself,” you’ll be given not only complete directions but time and concern. And a little thanks goes a long way.

  We took the children to look at the windows decorated for Christmas on Fifth Avenue. Many were beautiful, but the most exciting were at Lord & Taylor’s and B. Altman’s, where the windows were full holiday scenes, sometimes of skaters on the lake in Central Park dressed in Victorian clothes, sometimes of Santa Claus and his elves in their workshop. Whatever it was, there were always long lines; people didn’t get cross but chatted together, and the windows when we reached them were worth the wait.

  One late evening during the Christmas season not long after our return to New York, my husband, Hugh, was coming home from the theater on the subway and got to talking with a young man who had an armload of classical records. He invited the young man to come to our apartment for an after-theater supper. He was a doctor in New York for a medical conference, and we enjoyed him. The next time he was in the city he brought his wife to our place for dinner, and we’ve kept in touch all these years. Would we feel free enough today to ask a stranger on the subway to come home for supper? I’m not sure, but I’m glad it happened, and even back then, the season surely had something to do with it.

  Through a series of these “non-coincidences” which make life so interesting, we became friends with a young star of the New York City Ballet, and the Christmas production of The Nutcracker became even more exciting than it had before. What a delight to watch our new friend dancing the cavalier! But there are marvelous Christmas pleasures in this magical ballet for anyone lucky enough to be in the New York State Theater during The Nutcracker’s run. I still feel a thrill as the Christmas tree becomes larger and larger and larger and larger! And the beauty of the snow falling in the pine forest as Clara and the young cavalier dance together usually brings a lump to my throat. Many Christmas joys in New York cost no more than a bus or a subway ride: but if only one thing is worth spending money on, it is The Nutcracker.

  I love Tchaikovsky’s music, but indeed I love all of New York’s Christmas music, from the Salvation Army carolers to the great choirs of the various churches. In one church or another a performance of Handel’s Messiah will be found, or Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, or seventeenth-century carols played on period instruments. This abundance is listed in various papers and magazines. Sometimes the people in the churches have come for the music; sometimes they have come to get warm; sometimes they have come to cry.

  Christmas is a season of beauty and ligh
t, but it can also be a time of great loneliness. Suicide rates rise at Christmastime. Each year there are more homeless folk sleeping in doorways, at the Port Authority, in Penn Station. Many churches have opened basements and filled them with cots for the homeless, and that is undoubtedly better than nothing, but the loneliness and the homelessness persist. In our city there are people who are very rich and people who are very poor, and a lot of us in between, but as the city gets rebuilt, with more and more condominiums, the homeless and the jobless have a harder and harder time. The city itself provides shelters, but sometimes shelters can be more dangerous than the street, even in the cold. There are no easy answers to the problems, which seem more poignant at Christmastime than at any other time of the year.

  But my own enjoyment of New York at Christmas is not at the expense of the poor and hungry; it is set beside it. And because it is Christmastime there can be a kind of sharing that would be impossible at any other time of year. One cold and drizzly December day my three children and I walked along Broadway singing Christmas carols. We sang with enthusiasm if not great beauty, and were joined by an amazing number of people. Only one man turned and snarled at us, and my children were shocked and hurt. Without stopping to think, I said to him, “It’s all right, you’re loved, you really are,” and started to sing again. The children joined me and so did the passersby who had witnessed the rebuff. I don’t think that this kind of incident could have happened in February, for instance. There’s something about Christmas in New York that breaks down ordinary reticence.

  In apartment buildings, windows are outlined with blinking, multicolored lights. Christmas trees are placed in windows where the lights can be seen by passersby. In the lobby of my apartment building the tenants on the decorating committee place a cluster of trees covered with tiny white lights for Christmas and a menorah for Hanukkah, one candle lit for each evening. We have a potluck party for the whole building, from babies to grandparents.