Free The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle Page A

Suzy.

    The next day, the second day of December, we all, even John, even Daddy when he got home from the office, made Christmas cookies. “We’d better make them early this year, just in case.”
    Just in case the baby comes earlier than expected.
    Mother added, “Babies have a way of keeping mothers too busy for Christmas cookies.”
    I was born at the end of November, so Mother didn’t make any Christmas cookies that year. I always seem to spoil things. I looked out the long kitchen windows at the mountains, thinking: Please, don’t let me spoil anything this year. Don’t let me spoil the Christmas Pageant. Help me to be a good angel. Please.
    On the third day of December, after the school bus had let John and me off at the foot of the hill and we’d trudged up the road to our house, Mother got wire and
empty tin cans and a few Christmas tree balls. She took strong scissors and cut the tops and bottoms of the cans so that they made stars and curlicues.

    Then we took thread and hung the Christmas balls and the tin designs on the wire, and Mother and John balanced it, and we had made the most beautiful Christmas mobile you could possibly imagine. John got on the ladder and hung the mobile in the middle of the kitchen ceiling, and it turned and twirled and tinkled and twinkled.
    The next day we looked for snow again, but the ground stayed brown, and the trees were dark against the sky. When we went out through the garage to walk down to the school bus, we looked at the big sled, at Daddy’s snowshoes, at our ice skates hanging on the wall, at the skis. But though the wind was damp and we had on our warm Norwegian anoraks, we knew it wasn’t cold enough for snow. The pond had a thin skin of ice, but not nearly enough for skating, and all that came down from the heavy grey skies was an occasional
drizzle that John said might turn into sleet, but not snow.

    And the days sped into December, On the fourth day Daddy put a big glimmering golden star over the mantelpiece in the living room. On the fifth day we taped a cardboard Santa Claus with his reindeer up the banisters of the front stairs; it came from England and is very bright and colorful.

    On the sixth day we strung the merry Norwegian elves across the whole length of the kitchen windows, and Mother said that our Christmas decorations were a real United Nations. On the seventh day we put a tall golden angel above the kitchen mantelpiece. Unlike the Advent calendar angel, this one was much too stately and dignified to look like Suzy, and I sighed because I knew that even with a costume and wings, I could never hope to look as graceful and beautiful as the golden angel.

    On the eighth day of December I was late getting home because the rehearsal of the Pageant lasted much longer than usual. And it lasted longer because the director couldn’t get me in a position that satisfied her. The most awful moment was when I heard her whisper to the assistant director, “I’ve never seen a seven-year-old be so awkward or ungraceful, but I suppose we really can’t recast the angel now.”
    I clamped my teeth tight shut to try to keep from crying, and the director said, “Don’t look so sullen, Vicky. An angel should be joyful, you know.”
    I nodded, but I didn’t dare unclench my teeth. One tear slipped out and trickled down my cheek, but I didn’t think anybody saw.
    When the rehearsal was over, Mr. Quinn, the minister, drove me home. He hadn’t seen the rehearsal
and he kept talking about how the Pageant was going to be the best ever, and that I was going to be a beautiful angel. If he’d been at the rehearsal he wouldn’t have said that.

    The Advent surprise for that day was to have the Christmas mugs at dinner, the mugs that look like Santa Claus. But I still felt like crying, and the cheerful Santa Claus face didn’t cheer me up at all. After we had baths and were in our warm pajamas