A century ago last Christmas, in 1914, on a European battlefield of the First War to end all wars, the last known act of Chivalry was committed.

This short story commemorates that last war-time decency of Mankind.  While the story is a fantasy and made up, the facts are not.

* * * * *

Dedicated to my cousin Susan D’Alessio
who has learned to keep the light of Christmas
burning in her heart year round.

* * * * *

The day Fast Eddie McKnight finally learned the True Meaning of X-mas,
A Fat Guy in a Red Leather Jacket,
A Bunch a’ Frickin’ Christmas gifts from the King And the Kaiser,
and

The Great Christmas Truce of 1914

A Fractured Santa Fantasy

by

Pete “The Elfman” D’Alessio

As in our Christmas tales before, the Canadian/US border is still the longest international border in the Americas.  Along this strip, at the uppermost line of New York State and all along the Trout river region, there are pinpoints of small towns like Chateauguay, Cannon Corners, Mooers… all diminutive, rustic communities which have been there back in the woods for a couple of centuries, distinguished and thriving and proud of it.  Not appearing on most maps in the last hundred years and doubtful for the next hundred years, however, and claimed by neither Canadian nor US map makers, stands—well, actually “leans” would still be more correct—leans Podunksville.  A town appropriately christened in the 1750s, a name single handedly rising up to inform the misplaced traveler that the Middle of Nowhere had officially been reached!

Podunksville was a meaningless little assemblage of shacks, trailers, and modest homes lost in the forest with a collective population of 187 people, twelve of which were the girls of Mrs. Quims’ Christmas Cathouse Bar & Grill.  As the name indicates, everyday there was Christmas, because everybody got to come down a chimney in one way or another.  Depending on who was passing through town, the Cathouse constituted a good portion of Podunksville’s economy.  Its competition across the street, the Moneysunk Inn—which was actually an inn—did an okay business, but as the Canadian truckers heading for New York City said, “While the food was much better at the Moneysunk, Mrs. Quims’ had the best ‘desserts’ in New York State!”  The rest of the economy was comprised of two gas stations, Reverend Goodbanger’s Zen Baptist Non-Denominational church/medical & daycare center, a movie theatre still not set up for sound, the old pool hall (it was more than a century old), the “new” Laundromat (it was less than a century old), a general store with the Town Hall/Courthouse and Mayor’s Office in the back, and a brick building with two cells that served as a Police Department, which did quite well passing out tickets on the two major highways that carefully avoided Podunksville, but fell for two and a half miles within its jurisdiction.  In front of the Town Hall/Courthouse and Mayor’s Office, the road bowed into a circle surrounding an island where a flagpole stood—but ever since the population dipped below two hundred, they only raised the American flag on the 4^th of July and holidays, like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

That being said, make no mistake, Podunksville was as American as pizza pie!  It had been so since President Washington’s day.  Citizens had fought with ole George, with Honest Abe and the Union, and when Teddy Roosevelt had charged up San Juan Hill, so did the Podunksvillians… only they charged down the hill, being more than a little lost when the fighting started.  Yes, they had fought and died for their country.  But the real dying the village had done was in World War I for Woody Wilson.  At the base of the flagpole in the circle was a plaque with sixty-three names on it, all sons, brothers, and fathers of this small town who had offered and spent their lives so that freedom would live willingly in this little village.  Some folk, such as Little Lizzy Henderschot, Officer Smitty, and the Reverend Goodbanger’s great-grandfathers still had family ties to England back then and didn’t wait for the United States to join the war.  They enlisted in 1914 and, as expected, got blown to bits almost immediately… nine by friendly fire.  There was an Edward McKnight on the list, but Fast Eddie couldn’t claim him as an ancestor.  Nobody’s great-grandfather could recall a McKnight family before Fast Eddie’s dad moved into town.  Besides, what difference did it make?  The man on the plaque was long dead.

As December fell upon the tiny hamlet, cold, crisp and clear, an old friend and his reindeer returned.  But somehow, this year he seemed different; less jolly, more sober.  His time in the police motorcycle garage was relatively infrequent, and he could be seen sitting for hours before the plaque by the flagpole.  After several days of this odd behavior, his friends were becoming more than a little concerned.

From the front window at the Christmas Cathouse, Miranda Quims could be seen sitting, sipping her blueberry-jasmine tea and watching Chris.  She did this until she could take no more.  Then she rose and marched down to the police station to enlist the help of Chris’ best friend in town, Police Chief “Fast” Eddie McKnight.  Eddie and his assistant, Officer Mac, were in conference deciding what gifts and for who were going into the Cop Christmas Sack.

Miranda burst rather rudely into the conference and Eddie and Mac could tell she was more worried than angry.  “Eddie, get out there and see what’s buggin’ the old red devil!  I’ve never seen him like this.  I think he sees someone’s death… or he’s reliving someone’s death…”

“Huh?  What are you talking about, Miranda?”

“C’mon guys.  Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas!”

“Oh yeah, sometime I forget the old derelict is a saint.”

“Yes, Eddie, up to a century ago, when he staggered through World War I and came back a Looney Toon—”

“Chris?!”

“Honey, what ever happened was traumatic enough for him to start drinking like an elf on leave!”

“They get leave???”

“Aw, c’mon, Chief!  He’ll listen to you.  Find out what’s eating at him.  Look, I’ll throw you a free one!”

“Hmmm… that chicken-fried steak with home fries and greens of yours is pretty good…”

“Uh… yeah, I forgot who I was dealing with!  We can go that way too—and I’ll throw in a big slice of that blueberry pie à la mode you like so much!”

Chris just looked up at Eddie, then looked down at the list of names.  “Tell me the, truth, Ed.  You don’t know these men, how or when they died?

Fast Eddie shook his head.  “I’ve wondered about them.  I know some of the names, but nuttin’ about them, there’s nothin’ online or in the library.”  Eddie sat down next to Chris.  “Tell ya the truth, Chris, there’s something inside that tells me I should know them.  I dunno, maybe it’s me.”

Chris sat there for a moment and patted the Police Chief’s knee.  “Ed, do you remember the first line of the ‘Old King Cole’ poem?”

Ed looked confused by the question, but began to recite, “Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he.”

“Right!  Have you ever heard me referred to as a “ripe jolly old elf?”  Ed nodded.  “Well, if you’re a Christian you believe in one soul per life.  That can be the case, with a Washington or a Jefferson, but the Hindus aren’t wrong either.  If you have more to do, you’ll be back!  One day after you die, or three centuries later.  Right now, old Cole is working his way as an old black shoe-shine boy on a Chicago train platform.  He’s going to be murdered in a night or two.”

“Murdered?”

“It’s a Chicago tradition.  Wait’ll he finds out what he’s coming back as!”  Chris looked up at his friend, then back at the list of village dead:

Elias Goodbanger

Milo Henderschot

Whopinlie Humpindogs

Lucas McCanntikane II

Edward McKnight

Ivor Shortdek

Cranston Smitty...

“Ya wanna meet these guys?” Chris asked.  “They’re all here because they died before America entered the war.  I won’t lie to you, it’s gonna be dangerous!”

Eddie thought about it for thirty seconds.  “What I gotta do, Chris?”

Chris just grinned.  “Go gas up the trike.”

Fast Eddie knew the bike was ready.  He rolled it out to where Chris was standing.  He went to slide into the driver’s saddle, but Chris tossed him back into the sidecar.  “Hold on to your coconuts, cop, you never travelled like this.”  Chris looked down at the engine, then up into Fast Eddie’s face.  “Last chance, Ed.”

Eddie shot a finger indicating “forward” so of course, Chris threw it into reverse, kind of unusual for a motorcycle but then it jolted forward.  Eddie was rammed solidly against the sidecar’s windshield.  Nose pressed to glass, Fast Eddie watched the decades melting away from Christmas to Christmas.  The first thing he noticed was that the trike was turning into a 1914 Harley with a side hack, the first Harley to chain drive rather than leather belt it around.  The tank of this 1914 bike bore the “Cross of Lorraine,” the French Medal of Honor.

Ed saw his own Christmas’ pass, his dad handing him the keys to his first real bike at age sixteen, a Winchester .44 hunting rifle that he had loved when he was fifteen because it kicked like a mule, would bring down a bear, and he knew it meant he’d become a man in his dad’s eyes.  The Christmas before he had been given all the clothing and stuff a boy needed to follow his dad into the woods, then back another year or six to his first bat, ball, and glove at age eight; he'd never realized how many times his parents had shown him the Joy of Christmas with gifts that would warm his heart when remembered years later.  In a short time, he had passed the point of his own life.  The world was running in reverse, Christmas to Christmas.  He watched his father and mother growing younger, styles growing more and more antiquated.  It was a bit unnerving.  But it was when Fast Eddie finally managed to push his face off the sidecar’s windshield that the real shock came.

It was now the mid 1930s and Chris no longer looked like an old derelict.  He had grown Santa-wide in the middle with a full, white beard that reached down to his waist, and was garbed in the most regal ermine robes Ed had ever seen.  Oddly, there was no joviality in the man’s face, only an artificial smile that the few who knew Chris well could tell was false as they.  As the bike moved through time, flying backwards through the years of Nazi Germany, his traditional red robes transformed too.  Santa’s regal garb mutated to a heavy red leather jacket with a thick leather belt that ran across his chest, with several pouches and a holster attached to it.  The sleigh boots were gone, replaced with the high laced boots of an officer in the army of Great Britain.  Chris had become a 300 pound Colonel.  The cap on his head had morphed into an American- or English-style helmet, though Ed couldn’t understand why—America wouldn't enter into the conflict for several years.

Ed was finding it all amusing until he saw that he himself was garbed as an ambulance worker in the English army.  Before he could say anything, Chris leaned back and shouted through the growing chaos, “When we hit the ground, get your head down!”

When the trike hit the ground it bounced several times, tossing him two feet off the seat, and Ed suddenly found machine gun fire coming at him from two different directions.  He could feel the bullets zipping by him, hear the cries of the wounded… and, in an odd way, the silence of the dead.  Chris flew off the road and drove the bike into a trench.  It nearly pitched Ed out the sidecar.

In a few hundred yards, the chaos subsided and Chris pulled over.  “Havin’ fun yet?”  He grinned down at Ed.

“Chris’ sake, Cringle, what happened?”

“That’s Colonel Cringle to you, Corporal, and you just made a run through a ‘no man’s land.’  And keep your damn head down; there are German snipers all over the place!”  Chris looked around.  “It’s getting late.  We got a mile to go yet and three weeks before Christmas.”

5 December 1914

II Corps HQ

General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien

Commanders of all Divisions:

It is during this period that the greatest danger to the morale of troops exists. Experience of this and of every other war proves undoubtedly that troops in trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted to do so, into a “live and let live” theory of life...officers and men sink into a military lethargy from which it is difficult to arouse them when the moment for great sacrifices again arises...the attitude of our troops can be readily understood and to a certain extent commands sympathy...such an attitude is however most dangerous for it discourages initiative in commanders and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks...the Corps Commander therefore directs Divisional Commanders to impress on subordinate commanders the absolute necessity of encouraging offensive spirit... friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices, however tempting and amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.

Despite the coldness of the freezing air, Ed found himself in mud up to his knees.  And when German machine gun fire forced him down on all fours in the trench he was literally in mud up to his elbows.  They slogged through the cold mud dragging or pulling the now mud-encased Harley with them.  Chris kept a large bag with a red cross on it as covered as possible, seemingly preferring to take a round from a German Mauser in the hands of a sniper than letting a bullet disturb the sanctity of the bag.  A couple of very close rounds later and Eddie was ready to drop the bag, the bike. and Chris and run like hell.

“Jesus, Chris, what’s in that bag that’s so important?” Ed mumbled as both men strained to lift the bike from the mud that was sucking the machine into it.  Chris, despite the odd sniper shot, straightened up and leaned towards his associate.

“Mail, Eddie.  A tremendous and continuing flow of mail.  Old King George has sent a Christmas card to every member of his fighting force and the Princess Mary fund has sent a ‘Princess Mary box,’ small metal boxes containing tobacco and cigarettes or chocolate, along with a Christmas card from the princess and her picture, to every soldier.  The Kaiser has done about the same.”  As dusk was settling around them they again pushed forward.  Cringle continued talking as they moved.  “Eddie, everybody thought the war would end by the first Christmas in the trenches.  It’s just starting.”

Eddie was almost tossed into the icy mud when Chris suddenly stopped pushing and lifted his head over the trench they were moving through and looked around.  “Okay, Ed.  At that point over there we’ll drop a couple planks and roll us up top.  You hop in the seat and drive as fast as you can.  The British line is over that ridge.”

By the time they reached the lines of choice, it was dark.  It was obvious by the reception that Chris was a frequent guest.

The weaponry of the times was devastating.  The main weapon used by the Brits in the trenches was the bolt-action rifle.  Fifteen rounds could be fired in a minute, and an enemy 1,000 yards away could be killed.  Machine guns were common on both sides, but required four, five, or six men to work them, and had to be on a flat surface.  The upside was that they had the firepower of a hundred rifles, and required only a general area to aim at.  They sprayed bullets at a devastating rate, cutting down anything or anybody in front of its barrel.  The amount of death to charging men was high, bloody, and relentless.  More often than not, dead comrades could not be removed from the fields were they had been cut down, the fire from the enemy being too fierce.  With the cold air and the mud, the dead sunk partially into the earth and lay there, frozen.  Fast Eddie found the situation nauseating, and panic set in when he learned that when Chris went back for more mail, he’d be in charge of wounded and corpse retrieval.

The army was ordered into a series of small, fruitless attacks early on.  Cut down by rifle and machine gun fire, they couldn’t enter enemy trenches; and left many casualties lying in no man's land and on the enemy barbed wire defenses.  Germany had devastated their enemies.  Large field guns were delivering death blows to the Brits.  They fired impact-exploding shells that left craters in the ground that became fox holes.

The German army also used poison gas regularly; there were no rules of war prohibiting this type of warfare.  A particularly fear-inspiring weapon was chlorine gas.  It caused a burning sensation in the throat and terrible chest pains.  Death came as painful suffocation.  Eddie learned quickly that there was nothing in his medical bag that could ease a dying soldier’s transition into the afterlife when gassed.  But there was a problem with chlorine gas.  If the wind blew in the wrong direction, it could end up killing your own troops rather than the enemy.

Mustard gas was the most deadly weapon used, and it elevated an individual’s gas mask to the same importance as a rifle.  It was fired into the trenches in shells, was colorless, and could take up to twelve hours to take effect.  Blistering skin, vomiting, sore eyes, internal and external bleeding, and death could take up to five weeks.  Five weeks of agony and knowing you were going to die.

All this was embedded in Fast Eddie’s head as he assumed the life of a World War I medical aide.  All this knowledge was imparted to him as he and Chris approached the British trenches.  Chris returned to HQ on foot, returning the next day in an ambulance.  Ed learned he could dash across no man’s land on the bike, retrieve the wounded and, whenever possible, the dead.  Over the next two weeks Ed, to the cheers of those semi-safely secured in the trenches and cries of “Go Yank, go!” made run after run for the wounded.  He was almost impressed as to how quickly he had gotten used to people shooting at him as he worked.  As soon as he got back to the friendly trenches, Cringle in his bright red jacket would appear to carry the wounded back to a field hospital behind the lines.

Ed never knew how Chris got across the battlefield with that boxy vehicle.  Ed learned the military ambulance was a “Mark 3.”  As the American’s had not yet entered the war with their Fords, most of the ambulances were still horse-drawn.  Of course, driving like a maniac had a lot to do with it, and Chris had had many, many years experience driving reindeer around the world in one night, so driving horses hard was nothing out of character.  The Mark 3 could carry two stretcher cases and eight walking wounded.  Ed’s mad dashes across the battlefield, on the other hand, saw him putting a badly wounded in the car, a walker on the seat behind him, a dead soldier tied onto the front of the car, and then flying back through a hale of sniper fire.  It was made possible by the chain driven motor bike—the leather belt would have never lasted.  In the first two weeks, Ed convinced himself he had been crazy to come here.  The Brits looked to him as crazy brave, as the British lives he saved soon tallied into hundreds.

Then Chris got to do his thing again.  The horse-drawn box he drove was a mobile medical unit.  Each British division had several such units, as well as a specialist medical sanitary unit well back from the action of war.  The field ambulances, such as they were, provided dressing stations where the wounded could receive further treatment and be gotten into a condition where they could be evacuated to what was called a Casualty Clearing Station.  In many cases, men returned to their unit after first aid or some primary care.  But, outside of dressing the wounds to try to stop the bleeding, Chris took them to the nearest clearing station or field hospital and returned, often making ten or twelve trips in a day.  As the weeks of mid-December passed, Ed began to see where Santa had gotten his drinking problem.  The thick leather boots he wore were often covered and stained heavily in blood, often with human flesh, shaken loose by explosions, tangled in the laces.

20 December 1914

Ed began noticing as the days drew closer to Christmas, the sniper fire was abating.  And while it didn’t stop completely, gathering what wounded there was became a softer function.  A local truce began to appear in the lines in front of the 22nd Brigade, the unit Ed and Chris were attached to.  To Fast Eddie’s surprise, Germans begin taking in British wounded from no man's land for care or burial.  But reality would always creep back in, and at least one soldier was shot while assisting with the wounded.  A similar activity took place on the front of several other Brigades, too.

23 December 1914

By the 23^rd, reports began coming in that both sides had been heard singing hymns in the trenches.  It was the first time since they had arrived here that Fast Eddie saw Chris’s face without sadness or strain.  He wasn’t what you’d call overjoyed, but the decrease in civilization-sanctioned slaughter had eased old Santa’s face a bit.  With the mild cessation of killing, Chris used the empty space in his ambulance to bring more presents and cards from the King and the Princess, and other packages from home, to the soldiers in the trenches.  It spread a soldiers' Christmas cheer.

Unbeknownst to anyone but Ed, Santa was helping to bring the same from the Kaiser to the fellows in the other trenches.  He was Santa Clause for the world, after all.

German soldiers coming up to the lines were seen bringing in Christmas trees, and some of them begin to place them on the front of the trenches.  It was slowly spreading the feeling of the season.  Both armies had been told that this war would be over by Christmas, but in the trenches, men were aware this was only the first Holy Night with mud, blood, and lice.  They had not been away from civilian life long enough not to still retain a little of the Season’s Spirit.

British forces now consisted of the shattered units of the regular army, most of which had been all but destroyed at Ypres, and which were in the process of being rebuilt by receiving new draftees.  The dull nature of trench warfare and the close proximity of the enemy allowed their opponents to be heard in conversation, their cooking meals smelled, and the moans or screams of the wounded could resonate off the walls of their bunkers.  This caused many men to become curious about the men they were facing.  Those soldiers faced the same conditions of wet, mud, heat and cold, after all, and a strange mutual respect developed with the rising good cheer.  There were occasional shouted conversations between trenches, and instances of exchange of goods, but incautious men were continually lost to sniper fire, reminding all that they were still at war.

24 December 1914

Christmas Eve

The air turned colder and a frost appeared on the ground.  This made conditions in the trenches a little more bearable, the ground turning solid for the first time in weeks.  Still, across the Western Front, ninety-eight British soldiers still died that day, victims of sniper fire.  During the afternoon and early evening, Brits were astonished to see many Christmas trees with candles and paper lanterns glowing on enemy parapets.  A volley of carols and hymns erupted, and gradually both sides did what their leaders hadn’t.  They talked with each other and, in some places, with Chris as a go-between, men exchanged goods and food.  Sadly, many of these meetings arranged for the gathering of bodies.  In other places, firing continued.  The night brought a clear, still air with more hard frost.

Fast Eddie watched all this unfold.  With some minor free time, he’d located several ancestors of Podunksville, but couldn’t find the soldier who shared his name.  Chris, however, chose to act rather than watch.  He organized church services and arranged Christmas dinners in barns and bombed-out buildings.

25 December 1914

Christmas Day

At the front lines, the fraternization of Christmas Eve continued throughout the day.  Many bodies that had been lying out in no man's land were buried—some in shared graves, true, but it was still better than letting deceased comrades rot on the battlefield.  Many warriors recorded these strange and wonderful Christmas tidings and sent word home.  Some Brits exchanged addresses with German soldiers, many of whom spoke English, for travel after the war.

And yet, Chris still counted eighty-one British soldiers dying on this day.  A few died in areas that were otherwise peaceful and with fraternization going on, victims of snipers.  In other areas, the war was still in progress.

As night fell, the world of war seemed to grow quiet as soldiers of both armies fell back to their trenches to take whatever Christmas meal Chris had provided for them.  It began to snow, lending a soft white cover to the frozen mud.  While both sides felt a calm relaxation, officers and men on both sides tried to resume normal war caution.  But even with that, an unofficial truce was felt, offering a chance to carry out work that would have been otherwise dangerous.  As word of the truce reached HQ, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien demanded particulars of those units and officers who took part in this unmilitary event.

Sixty-two British soldiers still die on this day.

In early December 1914, Pope Benedict XV requested that the nations “cease the clang of arms while Christendom celebrates the Feast of the World's Redemption.”  Germany said it would do so as long as the other nations did; they did not, and the Pope's effort faltered.  It is doubtful whether it had any meaningful impact on what eventually happened.  More effective was Chris offering cheer with cards and gifts and warm handshakes offered.

The weather turned wet again with rain, sleet, and storms.  Yet in some places the friendly mood remained for several days after Christmas, and there was almost no firing, although open fraternization would gradually die away.  A soccer game erupted with a makeshift ball.  Chris, in goal, slipped in the mud and the Brits fell, 3-2, to the Germans.

In the early winter of 1914, a Christmas miracle occurred.  On Christmas week a spontaneous truce broke out in various spots along the hundreds of miles of trenches involving some 100,000 soldiers who, days earlier, had been at each other with murderous intent.  Enemies laid down their guns, walked across a no man's land and exchanged gifts, maybe a button cut from a uniform, or a piece of fruit from a holiday box sent by their family; a remembrance of three wise men.  It was in the Spirit of a wondrous Season.  It was obvious now that there was no quick end to the war in sight.  But clearly, on Christmas Eve, Fast Eddie learned a true miracle had occurred.  In one place along the German trenches the sight of lighted Christmas trees quelled hostilities.  In another place, it was an echoed chorus of "Stille Nacht" and "Silent Night,” sung in an odd wartime harmony.  In one spot, where a German machine gun had stood, was a hand-lettered sign that summed up the spirit of the Christmas truce: "We no shoot.  You no shoot."  Gifts that were exchanged included items sent from the soldiers' homes—plum puddings, cigars, hand-knit scarves and mittens, wine, cheese, nuts and jam, the things that soldiers surrounded by death would have hoarded as treasures reminding them of home, safety and cleanliness.

Eddie, sitting on his Harley waiting for a need to move, chuckled to himself.  A German officer and two Brits were calmly conversing as if they were standing outside a Munich or London pub, as if there wasn’t a war on.  “Only business,” Eddie thought to himself, “nothing personal, nearly eighty years before it’s fashionable”.

Christmas Eve in 1914 was cold and, as midnight approached, the world at war remained quiet.  Ed and Chris sat outside a bunker and silently watched the sky, assured in the knowledge that their services would not be required for at least a little while.  At odd intervals, a long way off, the report of a rifle could be heard and reality had to be acknowledged.  Chris had made a final dash at nightfall bringing cards and gifts and food, and the fat man in the red leather jacket was cheered on by Brits and Germans alike.  After it was all properly distributed, hands shaken and warm wishes expressed, Chris grabbed his fellow time traveler by the arm and silently dragged him outside where he produced a small coffee pot with enough raw coffee for two, maybe three strong cups.  A small fire was made from several loose, dry trench wall supports, a canteen emptied, and the two friends sat down awaiting the chemical reaction of heat to water to beans.

When the coffee was poured, old man Cringle produced a small bottle with a clear brownish liquid inside.  “It wouldn’t be Christmas without a little Irish Mist in the coffee.”  Ed grinned and nodded, remembering the first time he had met Chris.  Ed hadn’t smiled since they had arrived.  Actually, he hadn’t had a good cup of coffee either.  In the chilled air, the spiked coffee warmed Ed to his core.  His friend had been more than generous with the liquor, an event not lost on him.  Alcohol for drinking was very hard to find, and carried stiff penalties if you were caught drinking on duty.  They sat quietly for a few moments.

“Chris, what now?” Ed asked.

Chris’ cheeks were now rosy red and Ed could see that he was trying to smile, but just couldn’t make his mouth go the distance.

“Now?  Now we hang around for Christmas Day, then scoot back to the flagpole in the circle.  And our life and time goes on.”

Ed lowered his head until his chin rested on his chest.  He was thinking about the war he had served in.  There was no dignity, no honor to it.  It had been killing as a job.  Here and now, it was different.  These men, through the miracle of Christmas, were holding on to a single strand of civilization.  For a brief instant, Fast Eddie McNight felt as if he had found his place in the universe.  He had lost the energy he’d had as a rookie cop.  Home was a small pond, and nothing was new any more.

“Chris, they need me here.  I wanna stay.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ed.  I don’t even think that you can stay without disrupting the flow of time.”

It was a mild day with a slight snowfall when Cringle arrived at Podunksville on Christmas Eve’s day.  He pulled the trike into the police garage and stood there contemplating his next move.  He walked to the entrance and looked down Main Street.  The Chief was hard at work handing out parking tickets.  “On Christmas Eve, no less,” Chris muttered.  The thought made him chuckle, and he walked slowly towards the flagpole and memorial.  He sat and started reading the memorial stone.

“Hey, Chris, you made it.  Miranda was getting worried about you.”  The police chief had walked up behind him with two cups of coffee and a bottle of Irish Mist, as had become the tradition.

“And you, Chief?”

“You know I worry about you, Chris.  I couldn’t make the trip tonight without you.  After all, you are Santa Claus.”

The old man smiled his best jolly old smile.  “Why thank you, Chief Mac.”

At this time and on behalf of the Stasheff and D’Alessio families, we wish you Merry Christmas and the Season’s Best.

Pete D