A Visit from St. Nicholas

Saturday was the feast of St. Nicholas. Every December 6, I think of my friend K, with whom I’ve been friends since childhood. One December 5, when I was 12 or so, I found myself staying overnight at her house while my parents were away dealing with a family emergency. K’s mother is German and her family celebrated the Christmas season with a lot of German traditions, including the tradition of putting your shoes outside your door on the night before St. Nicholas Day. I had never heard of this tradition before, but I was urged to put my shoe next to K’s outside the bedroom door before we went to sleep.

K’s room was tiny and crowded with the things she loved — books, old hats, the dolls she still loved — and there wasn’t much room for a guest. But in the back of her closet, there was a steep, narrow staircase. The riser of each step opened up revealing a place to keep shoes or clothes, or whatever she might need to stow away. At the top of the stairs was a tiny guest room, carved out under rafters, with a skylight a few feet over the cozy featherbed. I loved staying there.

When we woke up on December 6, we found our shoes had been filled with small gifts and delicious German chocolate and salty German licorice (a favorite of K’s and soon of mine as well) overnight. It is the only time I’ve celebrated this holiday in the German way, but it has become the official start of Christmas around here.

This year, my mother sent a book to us, wrapped in gold paper, to be opened this morning. AJ came bouncing into my room with it at 7 and tore it open. It turned out to be John Masefield’s The Box of Delights.

I’m not sure how I have failed to encounter this book until now. I knew of it, of course. It’s hard to grow up in England without having heard of it. I even caught the tail-end of a BBC production of it a few years ago on PBS, but although I was captivated, I failed to follow up. Which is why this book was such a particularly good present, one I might never have gotten around to tracking down for myself.

The book draws you in immediately, introducing you to the hero Kay, a boy of about 11 or 12, as he takes a train trip home from school for the Christmas holidays alone. He has not traveled this way before and the whole thing is an adventure. Mysterious things begin to happen. Or is it just his perception? Is it because he is on the lookout for mystery that it finds him? One of the things I love most about what I’ve read so far is the way the fantastic things that happen — gates opening in walls and miniature soldiers marching out, for instance; or a man disappearing into a picture on a wall and sending out a shower of paper like snowflakes that turn out to have messages written on them — but are not commented on as fantastic. Kay never says, “Whoa! That was weird! Did you see that?” He lives in a world where his imagination allows for all kinds of things to happen.

Masefield’s language reflects the same kind of fluidity between the practical and the magical or mysterious, begining with the table of contents, which is written in verse (Masefield was England’s Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967). Masefield’s English country landscapes come alive and become their own characters, complete with details on past history and future possibilities. For example,

Kay went on alone into the street. He thought that he had never been out in a more evil-looking afternoon. The marketplace had emptied, people had packed their booths, and wheeled away their barrows. As he went down towards Dr. Gubbinses, the carved beasts in the woodwork of the old houses seemed crouching against the weather. Darkness was already closing in. There was a kind of glare in the evil heaven. The wind moaned about the lanes. All the sky above the roofs was grim with menace, and the darkness of the afternoon gave a strangeness to the fire-light that glowed in many windows.

Masefield’s characters are every bit as engaging as his landscapes, particularly Kay’s friend Maria, a would-be pirate who announces that “Christmas ought to be brought up to date, it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.”

AJ and I have been fighting over the book. We have had to arrange a time share, where I get to read it at night after he goes to bed. When I am done for the night, I am to leave it on the hall table between our bedroom doors so that when he wakes early, he can get some time in before breakfast. We also read it together at night before bed because, as AJ points out, it is an excellent book to read with your eyes closed so you can see everything in your head. On the other hand, it is also an excellent book to read with your eyes open, because of the lovely pictures drawn by Masefield’s daughter Judith. And so our book has three bookmarks in it, one that says “AJ,” one that says, “Mommy,” and one that says “Bedtime.”

The Box of Delights is very much out of the same school that gave rise to the very English institution of the Christmas pantomime. It has a pastiche of figures from English literature and history woven into its story (the King Arthur legends, Herne the hunter, etc.). It is very, very English, in much the same way as the Chronicles of Narnia, and as such, it reminds me of my childhood. But although the language can at times be arcane or foreign to a contemporary American child (the book was written in the 1930s), it is not at all hard to figure it out. And the very sound of the words makes this a perfect book to share out loud with a child of your acquaintance.