Christmas

SINCE Michaelmas my Yule log has been propped against the walling of the hump-backed bridge over the river, which runs less than a hundred yards away from my cottage door. A small spate brought the log down one day, and the boys and I hauled it out with a lasso. It weighs about one and a half hundredweight, and is of yew.

Many times have I wondered if it were not too good for burning: if that salmon-pink wood, stronger than oak, should not be cut up for table legs.

A crack running by a twist in the ‘stick’ finally decided me. There stands the Yule log, which we shall drag into the sitting room on Christmas Eve.

The small children are excited, and have been rehearsing in make-believe for days. Only this morning Charlie the black cat ate three-year-old Margaret’s ‘yoolug’ — a piece of bacon rind on a string.

It is difficult to remember all the Christmastides of the past few years. There was one up in Rhode Island, when we skated on the lakes where herrings had spawned; another in the mess of the Navvies’ Battalion in Halton Park, Buckinghamshire, when the P.M. C., a major recently a sergeant major, gave us roast beef, saying it was good enough for anyone, and turkeys were only for fops, and he made his subalterns eat the fat, too, also he knocked down defaulting privates in the guardroom — but that was long ago; and then that flat and lifeless Christmas after the Armistice, when color and movement had gone from the only world we knew.

Best of all was that strange and beautiful Christmas of 1914, when we made friends with the Saxons of the 133rd Regiment opposite us under Messines Hill; when in the frosty moonlight of Christmas Eve we strolled about in No Man’s Land, talking and listening to the carols sung in German, only forty yards away, and later watching with indescribable feelings the candle-lit Christmas tree they planted on their parapet. And the great white star rising from the east, over their lines, which some of us thought must be a light on a pole, it was so bright!

That time had a dream quality for my eighteen-year-old self. Many of us, German and English, longed, and even prayed voicelessly, that its good will and kindness should extend and deepen, until no war spirit remained. Alas! it was not realizable — then.

Why should not this Christmas be the best one has known?

The children are beginning to be human beings, with their own personalities, and therefore as companions they are stimulating. Also, we are looking forward as eagerly to our guests’ coming as, we hope, they are eagerly anticipating their arrival. It has been fun arranging the bedrooms, and finding odd corners for camp beds.

And the walks we shall have, whatever the weather, on the high ground of Exmoor and in the lanes, with their tall beechcn hedges! The blazing of wood fires on open hearths shall greet us when we return, pleasantly tired, to sip tea made from the black iron kettle hanging on its lapping crook from the chimney bar.

I have got a spruce fir, with all its roots; it is set in an oak tub, for later planting-out in the hilltop field. The sapling shall not be murdered; it shall, after Christmas, join the company of its brethren below Windwhistle Spinney. Late on Christmas Eve, when the children are lying excitedly awake upstairs, or breathing sweetly in sleep, we and our friends will deck its branches with shimmering delights. Then into the cupboard under the stairs, until the afternoon party!

Of course everyone will hang out a stocking. And of course Father Christmas will fill each stocking, and everyone will sit at the long refectory table for breakfast. On one side the children, graded according to size, from the gypsy-dark Margaret to the blue-eyed Ann; on the other ourselves, the socalled adults, watching the happy faces over the table.

Afterward a two-mile walk across the park and fields to church. On the way we shall peer over the parapet of the bridge to see if any of the spawning salmon are visible.

And I shall show my friends the ant hill beside the river where every traveling otter scratches and rolls, a small hillock very green in spring with the many fishbone fragments that nourish the root grasses.

Before the church service everyone greets everyone else in voices that are neither loud nor yet too subdued. Contrast is the salt of life; and, after the singing of the good old hymns, we shall return in an amazingly short time to see the turkey turning slowly on the jack-spit by the hearth. And what a fire! The wood for it has been selected and matured for several years. Pine for the resinous scents; oak for body; elm for its majestic white ash; alder for its charcoal — the flames of these woods will blend and be thrown out by the bulk of the yew-wood back brand.

The twin rows of human cormorants will perch themselves along our table, I shall refuse to carve, corks will pop with bubble of grape and ginger; the lighted pudding, set with holly sprigs, will come in, with the mince pies, to be eyed with lessening enthusiasm except by the row of brighter faces. Who will want figs, dates, or nuts? Then for the crackers!

There will be ping-pong, skittles, bagatelle, lead-horse-racing, crown-andanchor, and maybe (since Harold is of the party) the three-card trick. And those of us who have realized the poise and harmony between life and death will meet in my writing room, to listen and to think as the voice of the King, symbol of our hopes for our brother men and neighbors, speaks around the earth.

Yes — this Christmas, I hope, will be ‘proper.’ Windles, the eldest boy, has just come in to tell me he has seen Father Christmas’s reindeer! They were going up the path to Bremridge Wood ... or else they were the red deer from Exmoor, driven down by the hard weather. Which were they, Dad?

Quick, Windles, tell the others what you’ve seen! Christmas! Christmas!!