Daylight had already begun to fade in Bailey’s Falls as Mina Fuchs arrived home from her school Christmas party. The winter sun reflected off the lake, and the sky glowed in shades of copper and pink in a bright band squeezed beneath a bank of clouds. Christmas Eve was coming.
Mina unlocked the door and kicked off her sparkly purple boots onto the mat in the entryway. The lights in the soles lit up as they hit the ground. A big yellow dog named Blue greeted her with a sloppy kiss, while Flora, her black-and-white cat with pink toes, threaded figure-eights through her legs, rustling the green taffeta skirt of her party dress. Mamma and Pappa would be home soon, but not before darkness fell heralding Christmas Eve.
This was a special night. Mina closed her eyes, drew in the scent of candle wax and fried potatoes still lingering from the last night of Hanukkah, and flopped on the living room sofa. Flora leapt into her lap, and Blue curled up at her feet, and she felt a wave of contentment as she awaited the arrival of Christmas Eve. It was not her holiday, but she welcomed it every year, for Mina Fuchs knew the secret of Christmas in Bailey’s Falls.
She knew what presents her friends would be opening in the morning under their trees, and she eagerly looked forward for Hazel, Rosie, and Josh to invite her to play with their new toys the very next day. Mina could imagine their smiles and laughter, and it made her happy. The lights, strung on trees, bushes, and porches around town, would light up as night finally fell, accompanied by the first stirrings of song, carried along on the evening breeze with the aroma of ginger snaps and shortbread. Pine trees and tinsel would glitter from windows around town.
Flora purred in her lap, Blue snored at her feet. Everything would soon be as it should be for Christmas Eve, as it always was, and Mina could only smile. But… Something was wrong.
The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the clouds closed onto the rim of the lake; the sky was dark. Night had fallen, yet there were no lights on strings; the winter breeze freshened, yet it carried no fragrance of spices and cookies; there was no snow, only a cold, desultory drizzle; Mina heard no voices raised in harmony to welcome Christmas Eve. She knew that something was terribly wrong, for she knew the secret of Christmas in Bailey’s Falls.
***
Three Wisemans came from the East bearing gifts many years before Mina was born. Regina Wiseman came with tinsel, Ruth Wiseman with treats, and Gersha Wiseman with song: offerings to the land that gave them shelter, and for its people, who would become their cherished neighbors. The Wisemans had come as refugees from Modn, a tiny shtetl tucked into the dark pines of the Carpathian foothills, fleeing just ahead of the pogroms and the wars between the white, blue, and red armies that would soak the landscape in blood and sorrow.
America had greeted the Wisemans with the promise of peace, prosperity, and a new life. Their new neighbors were strange, with barely a Jew among them, and some were gonifs and paskudniks, to be sure, but most welcomed them in friendship, and with open arms. The Modner rebbe always said that it was a mitzvah to return hospitality with generosity, and that it was wrong to arrive in your neighbor’s home empty-handed. So, the Wisemans came to the goldene medina, a Golden Land already so fortunate and bountiful, with their gifts. Their greatest gift was Christmas.
The Wisemans dispatched their cousins, nieces, nephews, and their numerous descendants to cities and towns across America to ensure that Christmas would always reliably come at nightfall on December 24th with all the peace, love, and joy that had greeted them as immigrants all those years ago. They settled in Tin-Pan Alley and Tinseltown, at the Grand Ole Opry and the Great White Way to spread Christmas cheer. And, in towns like Baltimore, Buffalo, Bakersfield, and Boston, there was always one person delegated to be the nitl-shomer, someone who would turn a secret key to inaugurate Christmas Eve, and who would watch over their Christian neighbors as they celebrated the holiday with their families.
Without the nitl-shomrim there would be no tinsel, no cookies and treats, no Santa Claus, no presents, and no music. It was a tough job, an annual all-night commitment, but it was, Ruth Wiseman once said, “the very least we could do.”
Mina’s Uncle Max was the nitl-shomer for Bailey’s Falls. Max Tannenbaum was a gruff man with a bristly beard that fell halfway down the front of his shirt. Mina’s mother rolled her eyes at his kvetching, and it seemed as if his closest friends Joey Gutman, Paul Olansky, and Morty Goldblum mostly just tolerated him. But Mina knew better: Uncle Max, she told her parents, was a kitten wrapped in steel wool. He was a man of warmth and love, who carried the spark of the divine in his soul. He did not often show it, but Uncle Max was a man of deep feeling.
Just last year, he had brought Mina to the secret room at the top of the bell tower next to Kaufman’s Theater on Chippewa Street where, every December 24th, he would turn the key that would begin Christmas. He would sit there like a forest ranger, he explained, looking out over the town from his vantage point until the next night, keeping watch over the holiday.
Uncle Max took the great gold key from its baize-lined box and put it in Mina’s tiny hands. She felt the heft of the metal, and the weight of the obligation. “We do this thing for our neighbors who sheltered us and helped us,” he said. “It is an act of thanksgiving, both to them and for them. Our gift is a tree that we grow for future generations, as the Talmud tells us, and it is a mitzvah to sit in this tower and to keep watch.” She heard her uncle’s voice waver, and saw tears well in his eyes. This was the beautiful secret of Christmas, and he had shared it with her.
***
Yet there was nothing this Christmas Eve; no lights, no scent of spice, no snowflakes, no music. Night had fallen an hour ago, and with it a pall of silence and gloom. Something was wrong. Mina got up from under the purring cat and the snoring dog, pulled on her sparkly winter boots and coat, and headed out the door into the damp chill. If there was no Christmas Eve, there would be no presents under the tree for Hazel, Rosie, and Josh, or for any of the other children to open in the morning; there would be no singing, and no treats, and no light. Bailey’s Falls would be dark and grim – a town without joy.
Mina headed east along Lake Street, to the park at the corner of Chippewa, where Patrick Hutchings always stood on Christmas Eve singing carols and songs in a voice redolent of hot toddy and Charles Dickens. Mr. Hutchings sat on the bench wrapped in his coat and scarf, with his guitar case beside him. He did not even look up when Mina passed and wished him a “merry Christmas.”
The only hint of Christmas lights came from the soles of her sparkly purple boots, which flashed and twinkled with her every step. The lights that hung in crisscross strings astride Chippewa Street were dark, and the doors to St. Paul’s Church were close shut. Mina thought she could just make out the shadow of Rev. MacKie against the blinds of the rectory window, sitting alone. The occasional car hissed dolefully on the wet street as it passed aimlessly, and the inflatable Santa Claus in front of Kaufman’s Theater lay deflated alongside his elves and reindeer in a scene resembling the site of some unspeakable disaster.
Mina came to the door at the base of the bell tower, reached up and gave the handle a pull; it didn’t budge; it was locked. She pressed the buzzer, and heard it sound faintly, but there was no answer, and there was no light from the nitl-shomer’s station far above. Uncle Max was not there; he had abandoned his post, leaving Christmas in Bailey’s Falls unattended for the first time in more than a century. This was very bad.
The plaintive sound of a violin playing a minor-key lament drifted on the breeze. Mina followed it until she came to Modner’s, a coffee shop on Carey Lane, the short alley tucked unobtrusively behind bustling Chippewa Street. This was where her parents would sometimes stop for coffee and a nosh when they were out shopping. Modner’s was famous for its strudel and babka, and it was usually the only business open on Christmas. Mina knew that she would find her uncle inside.
Max Tannenbaum sat at a table near the back, playing a high-stakes game of go fish with Mr. Gutman, Mr. Olansky, and Mr. Goldblum. There was a pile of crumpled dollar bills and tarnished coins on the table between them. “Do you have any jacks, Max?” Mr. Olansky asked. “Max?” Uncle Max didn’t look up; he didn’t even look at his cards. His coffee smelled strongly of something more potent than arabica beans and shlage. “Max?”
“Uncle Max!” Mina interjected as she strode across the floor, projecting her voice from an altitude just below her uncle’s dejected gaze. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
“And do you have any jacks?” Mr. Olansky added.
Max looked up at the girl standing before him in sparkly purple boots and a powder blue coat, with her feet apart, her hands on her hips, and an expression of something between concern and reproach on her face. The white pompom on her woolen hat bobbed as she mustered all the authority of a child to demand an explanation. “It’s Christmas Eve, Uncle Max, you’re supposed to be at the nitl-shomer’s station. It’s up to you to turn the key and start Christmas!”
Putting down his cards (face down so Mr. Olansky couldn’t see his hand) Max turned to Mina and sighed. “I’m sorry Minshka,” he said in a voice burdened with the weariness of generations. “I can’t do it this year. I can’t turn the key. Maybe next year… Maybe never again… But I just can’t do it this year. I can’t start Christmas.” He stroked his wiry beard and looked far away.
“Wait,” Mr. Gutman said. “That’s tonight? Is nitl nakht always on the same date? I thought it moved around like other holidays.”
“It’s tonight,” Max grumbled. “It’s always tonight. It will always be tonight.”
Mr. Goldblum polished his glasses. “So, don’t you have somewhere to be, Max? Like in the tower, maybe?”
“No,” Max shouted. “Not this year! I just can’t do it. It is not my holiday – I don’t care… I don’t believe in it anymore.”
Mina’s cheeks flushed, and she felt a wave of tears push against the backs of her eyes as she imagined Hazel, Rosie, Josh, and all of her friends waking to a grey, empty Christmas morning. “No, it is not our holiday, but it’s their holiday, and it is the gift that we gave to them.”
“The child is right, Max,” Mr. Olansky said, leaning back in his chair. He gestured widely, “We gave them Danny Kaye in White Christmas, after all, and that was directed by Michael Curtiz.”
“Mel Tormé’s ’Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,’” Mr. Gutman added.
“’Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer!” Mr. Goldblum shouted, “And ‘A Holly Jolly Christmas’ were by Johnny Marks.”
“Have you seen A Charlie Brown Christmas?” Mr. Olansky interrupted. “Oy! That meshuge dog is so funny with his skating and dancing! That was produced by Lee Mendelson.”
“Si Spiegel invented the artificial Christmas tree, and wasn’t tinsel one of the gifts of the Wisemans?” Mr. Gutman noted with a wag of a finger for emphasis. “My neighbors, the Gibsons, were glad of that when the tree they bought at the tree farm erupted in spiders and mites after they thawed it out last year. Now, they have something green, festive, and bug-free.”
Mina nodded at each item in the list. “These are our gifts to all of our neighbors,” she said. “And we have been giving them in love and gratitude for the friendship and hospitality of America since the three Wisemans first stepped off the boat.”
“Do they really deserve it, though?” Max asked thoughtfully, looking from one face to the other, finally settling on the little girl in the pompom hat and sparky purple boots. “Sure, they welcomed us, but not always with respect, still less with love. After all the slurs, and the stereotypes, the snide jokes at our expense, and even the Catastrophe, how can you say that they deserve it?”
Max stroked his beard and shook his head. “They have defaced our shuls, desecrated our graves, marched with torches chanting ‘the Jews will not replace us,’” he said softly. “They have murdered us at prayer… how can you say that they deserve our gift? This year, after all the others, as I think about it… I just can’t do it anymore. They might be our neighbors, but they are not our friends.”
A hush had fallen over the café, the violinist stopped playing her lament. “Who are ‘they,’ Max?” Mr. Gutman asked. “Remember last winter, when Rev. MacKie and his choir shoveled the snow from the roof of the shul on Shabbes so it wouldn’t collapse? He is our friend. Just like the people who gave us a home when we fled the pogroms a century ago were our friends… Just like those neighbors who overcame their prejudices and fears to become our friends.”
Mr. Goldblum placed his glasses back on his nose and straightened his kippah. “Doesn’t the Talmud tell us that repentance and good deeds are person’s advocates? And didn’t Rabbi Eliezer say that, even when you find only one-tenth of one percent of innocence in a man, even then, you ‘must be gracious unto him?’ It isn’t as if they were all marching with torches, or even one in a thousand, and we can’t allow the bad to define the good. Besides, we have more than a few mamzers of our own.”
Mr. Olansky and Mr. Gutman nodded in assent, Max raised a bushy eyebrow and grunted in acknowledgement. “We have more than a few mamzers of our own. That is true.”
There was a brief silence, the wind outside whistled faintly, and the rain rattled lightly on the windows. A chair leg squeaked on the wooden floor, and a spoon clanked as its owner thoughtfully stirred the shlage in their coffee. Mina walked up to her uncle’s chair, and reached her arms around his girth; the soles of her sparkly purple boots flashed with lights.
“You told me last year that the gift of the Wisemans was a tree that would grow for generations,” she said, “just like it says in the Talmud. When you plant something, you have an obligation to look after it, nurture it, and help it grow. Our gift, the gift of our people, is our responsibility… We can’t abandon it.”
A light that had not been there before appeared in Max’s eyes. He smiled and put his hand on Mina’s shoulder. “Thank you, Minshka, you are a wise little girl… and thank all of you for the lesson,” he said. He rose, took his coat from the back of the chair, placed his cap on his head. And, and took Mina by the hand. “It’s late, and we have work to do,” Max said as he led her to the door.
***
In the secret room at the top of the clock tower, Max took the great gold key from the baize-lined box and put it in Mina’s hands. “Tonight, you do the honors – let Christmas Eve begin.” Mina inserted the key in the slot and gave it a turn. There was a faint humming sound, and she saw the strings of lights across Chippewa Street flicker on. The cold rain became snowflakes – small at first, and then bigger ones as they joined together. She could hear Mr. Hutchings strum a chord on his guitar as his clear tenor voice rose in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” to Felix Mendelssohn’s melody.
Max Tannenbaum settled into the nitl-shomer’s high-backed chair and looked out at Bailey’s Falls as it lit up for Christmas Eve. “Thank you Minshka, for finding me,” he said. “I will take over. You should run along home now, it is almost time for supper, and your parents will wonder where you are. You can tell them that you were seeing the holiday in with your uncle.”
Mina gave Uncle Max a kiss on his bristly cheek, and headed to the stairs. As she left, she turned to see him pour some shnaps into a short-stemmed glass and lean back in the chair smiling.
Later that night, after supper, a dessert of ice cream and gingerbread from Boyman’s bakery, and a bedtime story about some silly old men who tried to capture the moon in a barrel, Mina lay in her bed watching the snow fall in the glow of the streetlights outside her window. Blue lay draped over her legs, breathing rhythmically while Flora purred on the pillow, wrapped around her head like a fur hat. She knew that Hazel, Rosie, Josh, and all those other children were dreaming of Christmas morning, and that their dreams would be, at least for the moment, fulfilled in a riot of wrapping paper and joy.
There was a scent of ginger and cinnamon in the air, and Mina could hear the tones of Rev. MacKie’s Lessons and Carols at St. Paul’s Church carried on the breeze, sounding so near under the close snowy sky. As she drifted off in the harmonious stillness of Christmas Eve, satisfied that she had helped to deliver the gift of the three Wisemans for another year, Mina thought she heard the faint jingling of sleigh bells.