“The Best Christmas Ever”
It was Christmas Eve in Pantomimville, an island off the coast of Antiguia. This independent piece of land is everything its citizens want it to be. Therefore, do not be confused if one of the residents refer to it as a continent, and another inhabitant says it is a town. This city, state, and country is a very attractive place despite its small size, and drew to it numerous settlers of all varieties. Pantomimville, just like its citizens, is also full of diversity. There are deserts, rainforests, lakes, mountains, valleys, plains, plateaus, rivers and hills. Such is the condition of Pantomimville so that no generalization can ever describe it.
Since it was the night before Christmas, most Pantomimvillians were busy buying gifts, or fussing over petty window decorations. It was not so for one little boy in City Three of the island, where our story took place. City Three is located on a plain, and is shaped like a diamond when seen from above. Twentieth Century technology graced its skyscrapers, that seemed to reach out toward the sky with their metallic hands. At the base of one of these tall giants, stood Tom, a child of ten.
Who was Tom, you ask? He was a poor penniless boy with ashy hair and curious light blue eyes. His nose was red from constant rubbing, and the tips of his ears glowed from the cold. Dressed in a shabbily patched tan coat, wearing a pair of ill-fitted trousers, and covered with a thin sheet of snowflakes, Tom stood outside the bakery. Looking inside the lighted store, his mouth watered as he watched batches after batches of cookies being sold. Tightly clutched in his hand was a one-dollar bill, as he stared and wondered what would he get for himself.
Just that morning, the store with the giant lollipops had introduced Santa, a plump old man with curly white hair. Like all the other boys and girls who still believed in Saint Nicholas, Tom went to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. “I want shomshin to eat fa Ecsh-mash,” Tom had whispered in the old man’s ears. The boy was rather puzzled when the other looked at him, frowned, then smiled sadly, full of pity. Tom wanted to ask if he said anything wrong, when the man pressed something into his hands.
Outside the store, Tom was overjoyed to find that it was a dollar that the Santa gave him. Rushing immediately to the bakery, the boy stood in front of the store to look at all the delicious delicacies. Secretly last night, when the first snowflake floated down and all the families were asleep, Tom made a prayer. “Dear God, pleash make thish my besht Chrishmash year efer. Shank you. Amen.” It seemed at the time to be such a simple wish. Yet, to Tom it came true, as he stood outside the bakery with his precious dollar.
Ignoring his grumbling stomach, the boy wondered over and over again about his ‘gift’. “Oh, wishesh do come true!” he said out loud. Up ‘till that day, all the food that Tom ever got was from the dinner for the homeless, at the local churches. Finally this time, he could chose. It was seven o’clock already and the baker got ready to close the shop door. All this time, ever since the morning, Tom had stood outside, not daring to go in. Now, fired by the worry that the place would close and he would be left with no cookie, the boy went in.
“Shir, may I haf a cookie.”
The fat man with the apron looked at Tom’s worn out clothes, and frowned.
“Go away, you little beggar! I have no cookie for you. Go to some charity if you want any food. I am closing.”
“Wait shir! I haf a dollar”
“You have a dollar? I bet you stole it! Well, business is business, which cookie do you want?”
Pointing to a frosted gingerbread man, Tom said with some awe,
“That one!”
Giving the boy what he wanted and taking the dollar in return, the baker closed the oven and shooed Tom out. What a silly boy! He didn’t know gingerbread only cost twenty cents. Hehe, what a foolish kid!
Tom, who did not know how to read or write, and who never bought anything before in his life, was quite happy with his accomplishment. I got a cookie! He wanted to sing. Holding that precious piece of gingerbread in his frost bitten hands, the boy moved quietly toward his night shelter, a bare cardboard box in a garbage-filled alley.
Out of the darkness, he heard sobbing. Going toward it, he saw a little boy in a blue sweater crying. The boy was a little younger than Tom and had on muddy shoes.
“Why do you cry?”
“I am lost,” the little boy wailed, “and I want my Mommy!”
Not knowing how to comfort the child, Tom gave him his gingerbread man. The boy took it without a word, and quieted down as he munched away.
“Eliot! How many times do I have to tell you: never accept food from strangers!” said a woman with pearl earrings in a minx coat. Without a look at poor Tom, she dragged the younger boy away, crushing what was left of the gingerbread with her high heels.
Desolated because he was hungry, Tom moved back toward his box. Even so, he was happy that the boy found his mother. In his shelter, he again made a prayer. “Dear God, shank you fa making my whish to Shanta come true, efen if it ish only hafway. Pleash make tomorrow jusht ash great. Shank you. Amen.” With the last words, Tom drifted to sleep.
It was Christmas morning, and glaring sunlight reflected off the glass-walled skyscrapers. Somewhere else, a cat meowed. Somewhere else, carol singers sang. Somewhere else, a limousine splattered mud all over the sidewalk. Somewhere else, a drunken men tottered from a bar, but here in the little alley, the cardboard box stayed still. Tom watched, with a celestial light pouring over him as he hovered above the little box. Beside him was an angel, whose wings were of pure white. Tom too, got a pair of wings, fragile-looking but strong. He looked at the box again, and at the frozen, but peaceful boy with ashy hair in it. To his companion, he simply said,
“I am ready to go home. Shank you God. Thish ish the besht Chrishmash efer!”
Christmas is a day of giving, but some use it to take. Poor Tom gave his only cookie away, and died from the starvation and the cold. Many others, like the baker, gave nothing, but took whatever they could get their hands on. City Three is only a part of Pantomimville, whose variety goes beyond imagination. Yet, even in such a city, we can see the cruelties of human nature, and what little good society offers. To Tom, who saw not its evils in his innocent eyes, it was the best Christmas ever. I leave it to you, my readers, to decide where this is the case.
ã 1999 Lady of Scartha. All rights reserved.
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If you like to learn more about Pantomimvillians, click here to meet another of its interesting characters: Miss Jab
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