Ellie’s Christmas

ELLIE AND HER MOTHER AND HER SISTERS ALL WENT to the Church of God every Sunday. Okey just stayed in bed, sleeping off his Saturday night.

At Christmas everybody at the Church of God drew names and gave gifts. No one was to spend more that fifty cents on a gift. But for some families, like Ellie’s, an extra fifty cents was hard to come by at Christmas time. Especially when it was fifty cents times five.

Ellie drew the name of a boy who lived at the mouth of Goldy’s Hollow. His name was James Meador, and he was the only child of a truck driver and his wife.

Since Ellie was nearly two years older than James, she knew she should be sensible about giving him a present.

She wasn’t.

For days Ellie walked around with the paper bearing James’s name on it all wadded up and sweaty in her hand.

Ellie looked at socks in the dime store. And handkerchiefs. She looked at baseball mitts. And at gloves.

Almost everything was over fifty cents. She also didn’t like any of it.

Ellie lay awake in bed at night and worried about a gift for James. She imagined what she’d give if she had five dollars to spend and could spend it. She would buy him a paint set. James looked like the kind of boy who would appreciate a paint set with real brushes and paint that didn’t wash off. And maybe a little easel.

Ellie fell asleep counting the pots of paint.

A week was left until the big Christmas program, with the play, and the passing out of brown paper bags filled with treats, and the exchanging of gifts. And Ellie still dreamed of paints and still had nothing to give James.

Her mother had started to complain. All the other girls had bought something for somebody at church. Why couldn’t Ellie just give James a nice pencil set or a box of colored erasers?

Ellie could not bring herself to buy James a pencil set.

And the night before the Saturday program, Ellie went to bed with still no gift to wrap for James. Her mother had given up on her and had bought James a package of No. 2 pencils in mixed colors.

Ellie lay stiff that night and concentrated. She bit her lower lip until the skin was loose, and she thought. Okey snored, Bullet’s chain clinked and the family fell fast asleep, but still she pondered. And when everyone was really dead asleep, she thought of it. She climbed out of bed and headed into the kitchen.

The next day when the Farley women went to church, they each had a package. Including Ellie. It was a wide, flat box that looked like it probably held handkerchiefs. When Ellie’s mother saw it, not wrapped but at least tied up with yellow yarn, she put the package of pencils in a kitchen drawer.

When the Christmas play put on by the younger children ended, the Ladies’ Circle members gathered near the pulpit and handed out the treat bags to everyone.

Then, after all the children (and some of the adults) had taken a good peek inside their bags to see just what kind of fruit they’d got and what sort of nuts and how much rock candy … then came time to open the presents that had been placed under the tree.

To ease the confusion, the congregation was split up into their regular Sunday School classes, since that was how the names had been drawn in the first place. Ellie and James were both in the Young People’s group.

It was difficult for Ellie to guess why James waited until all the rest had opened their presents before he opened his own. But Ellie, holding her breath, as well as the small pack of colored erasers she’d received, noticed that he did wait. And it seemed that when the yellow yarn finally came off the box and the lid was lifted, everybody was ready.

James seemed so surprised, at first, by what he saw, that his face was simply blank. And then, slowly, it opened into a smile.

First he drew from the box a large reindeer. It was a deep red and had horns frosted in sparkling white sugar. Its legs were curved, as though it were leaping—or flying—and a green bell was painted around its neck.

Next James lifted out a snowman. A snowman of rainbow colors—pink face, green arms and a green belly with three blue buttons. He was wearing a top hat of the same deep red as the reindeer, and it was laced with the same sparkling sugar.

James held each cookie up for the others to see as he explored the wide box, and when the box was empty, he sat surrounded by fifteen cookies, each painted and shining and bigger than James’s own hand.

Everyone looked longingly at the treasures as James carefully nested each back into the box (Ellie’s sisters were just flabbergasted), and Ellie blushed as compliments flew her way. She wished Okey had come.

James was not an eloquent boy and his face had spoken plainly enough, but as everyone left the church for home, he caught up with Ellie and split the reindeer cookie with her.