Eight Children and Their Christmas Wish-list

Nov.29, 2006

By Gudrun Sabrina Hirt

Christmas Bow, Knot One:  Girl with Green Ribbons

There is a girl who lived in the olden days whose name was Katarina.  She wore ribbons tied in big bows at the top of her head and one she had was emerald green; the other she had was forest green.  This made her very unusual because only black or white ribbons were usual in those days.  Katarina wore a big white pinafore over her dress, every day, which was just like all the little girls her age.  She had one pair of button-up boots for the winter and one coat, which was purple and with a fur-trimmed hood.

This coat made her different from all the little middle-class girls, and the green ribbons she wore made her different anyway, and nobody knew why she wore them, even though she was teased at school for them.  Everybody, even the teachers and the neighbours, knew the purple coat with the brown fir-trim on it had been given to Katarina by an old lady who was rich.  It had been December 23^rd, the year before when Katarina had been eight and had been admiring the Christmas trees for sale at the Christmas Market, when a rich old lady, named Frau Edelherz, came to look for a Christmas tree for her home.  Katarina, without being told to speak, offered the kind old lady some advice, and did so in such an enchanting way that Frau Edelherz said there would not need to be any silver or gold on this Christmas tree because of Katarina’s sparkle shining all over it.  She told Katarina, this would be the first Christmas tree she would ever have without any golden tinsel, any silver baubles or any single decoration on it.

In deed, and what Frau Edelherz said really came true, for Katarina saw the Christmas tree standing beautifully in Frau Edelherz’s mansion, on December the 25^th.  Yes, Katarina’s family had been invited on Christmas Day, and Katarina also had requested if she might invite some children from school or nobody would ever believe her.  And this request, Frau Edelherz lovingly granted.

Katarina had become so important to Frau Edelherz because that day at the Christmas Market had been just the day after her husband’s funeral.  So, in deed, Frau Edelherz had least been expecting to be amused and brightened up.

And this is the story of how Katarina got the lovely purple coat with the fur-trimmed hood which made her look very different from the other little middle class girls.  The fur had been from an animal that was nearly extinct, and the coat used to have been the coat of Frau Edelherz’s own daughter, who had died just when she was Katarina’s age, thirty-four years ago, so Frau Edelherz had said.  People died very easily in those days, even after Small Pox wasn’t the current bug around anymore.  You could even die of a very bad cold, if it was your time to go . . .

But Katarina was quite a healthy child.

Knot Two: A house of Eight Children and None Dead

It ran in her family, good health.  Katarina had seven brothers and sisters and there were no two or three more to remember silently because they had died – not even one.  Not even any unborn ones either.  The good health even as an unborn baby came down from both Mother and Father – except, no one was quite sure if it was down mother’s line.  No one had ever known who her mother was, though her father had raised her.

Because they were eight children and every one of them, doted on by their parents, they had all the bedrooms of the house, which were only two, of course, for their toys and creative arts.  In those days, they were called nurseries.  In one room was the doll house; was the little table set for tea parties every day.  There was the dress-up wardrobe and were the skipping ropes to bring outside when the street wasn’t covered in slippery ice.  The other room was where the boys sawed wood and carved figurines and guns and swords which they sold at school.  They also had a few homeless people selling these.  Half of the proceeds went to the other homeless; the other half was for the artisans of these figurines – of course, Katarina’s brothers.  It was what we would call nowadays: “fair-trade”.

The girls made things out of clay dug out from their back garden because they weren’t allowed to carve or build things out of wood like the boys were.  Their fingers had to be all there for sewing, cooking, and when they grew up to do these things even more.  Two of Katarina’s brothers had already lost a finger.  But that had been in the very beginning when they had just started and had not yet learned their lesson not to fight over knives or someone was going to get hurt.

It was once again the month of Christmas.  All the children were told by their parents they had better write their Christmas wish-list that night.  It had already been two weeks the children had been told to write it.  This was not a good impression the Christmas Man would have of them that year. 

By the way, the Christmas Man is Father Christmas.  “Christmas Man” is the direct translation of the German name for Father Christmas which is “Weihnachtsmann”.

In German, Mother is “Mutter”, pronounced moo-ter, and Father is “Vater”, pronounced fatter.  Mutter and Vater were angry that their children kept putting off the Christmas Wish-list to the last minute, mostly because of their concern for the Christmas Man and his being able to finish all the presents on time for their children.  They also were afraid of the shame of them getting no presents at all and only a whack with the “Rute” across their poor little bottoms.

The “Rute” is a bundle of twigs from a tree, quite stiff, which the “Weihnachtsmann” brought around with him at his side at the same time as carrying a heavy, huge sack on his back, filled with toys.  The “Rute” however, also had quite a many sweets tied to its twigs, if you had not been quite such a bad child.

Knot Three: One boy would rather not get his present

Vater told the children there would soon be no time left for their wish-toys to be made ready in time in Heaven in time for Christmas Eve.  Therefore, they should only make one wish, each of them.  If they waited one more day, then every wish-for present would surely arrive only half-done.  Then you might as well write on your wish list, you would accept waiting till next year Christmas for your present.

Parents, in those days, were quite serious and had to be well-respected.  Beating with your old grandfather’s walking cane was the consequence if you did not respect your parents.

Maximilian studied his father’s face for a while when he had heard that the rocking horse he had wished for would only arrive half-done.  Maximilian could be very serious as well, even too serious for his age and for the children of his time, back in the olden days.  Then he said, to his father, “I’ll be glad if my present isn’t done in time for Christmas Eve.  Then I can finish the rocking horse on my own and have it just the way I want it.  Right, Vater?”

When some of the other children heard this and one guffawed, the other snickered . . . Vater was looking severe at all the children, much more than looking severe at Maximilian.  Maximilian had been very cheeky, and cheekiness needed to be smacked off and straight away.  Vater had just come home from a long day’s work however, and the eldest boys, Johann and Albrecht, had been pulling for his stubborn black boots to come off his feet for what must have been an entire minute.  Father was too tired to go get the strap.  And he honestly did not look forward to Grossvater (Grandfather) with his cane to come home because Grossvater was his father-in-law and most annoying.  And Grossvater’s cane had been used on Vater himself.  That had been just after the first time Vater had asked Hildegard, Grossvater’s daughter, to marry him.  Grossvater still used it on Vater when the children were not disciplined enough.  It was just one whack across the shins, usually.  That wasn’t anything compared to what the children were supposed to get, of course.

Maybe it was six out of eight of the children who still would not write their Christmas Wish-list that night, if they had the choice.  You’ll find out later why it did not spark their enthusiasm. 

Katarina was thinking about it differently from the others, but she couldn’t get away from the pictures in an illustrated Christmas book she was absorbed in, sitting in an armchair with her legs dangling over the arm rest. 

There was also the youngest of the eight, at three and a half, a fair and pretty child but perhaps too thin for her age because she still preferred eating and drinking milk only, with big wondering eyes and honey coloured hair that only curled around the frame of her face.  This was baby Gudrun.  She was usually merely observant of everybody or sitting on the lap of the eldest sister, being the baby, or on her own routes of discovery.  But now she was urgently going around to everybody, trying to convince them they really had to write their Christmas Wish list, and it had to be right away.

“What if we get no presents this year?” was her challenge, said in her confident, naïve three-year-old voice.

As for Katarina, she had been looking forward to helping Mother and the maid Liesel wash clothes in the kitchen, but she definitely wanted to have a Christmas present that year.  So she took little Gudrun by the hand and together they went to Mutter and Vater’s oak wood writing desk, took out a fine white paper which was very expensive, from inside, and Katarina started to draw on it.

Knot Four: Keeping Inside Your right of Mind

Of course, this was to be a Christmas wish list and you needed to write down in words what you wanted, but Katarina was very good at drawing and she always thought her good pictures would impress everybody up in Heaven, where this letter was going.

Gudrun watched her draw.  She was not allowed to touch the paper while Katarina was drawing.  But later, she was allowed to colour everything in.  Gudrun was very good at colouring in, though she was only three.  She never went out of the lines.  She had been trained this by the eldest sister, Annelore, who said it was bad manners to go out of the lines.  It was just like going up to the pulpit after the pastor had delivered his sermon and stepping on his toes on purpose, Annelore said.  Gudrun of course, perhaps because she was almost four years old, had already grown old enough to be in her right mind, and wouldn’t do crazy things like that.

The only crazy thing she did was sing straight through the sermon from her hymn book, which she liked very very much.

This would only be on an occasional Sunday when the Sunday School Teacher was ill and all the children had to sit in the grown-up church and could not understand anything said anyway.

“How do you like our Christmas wish-list?”  Gudrun went around to all her brothers and sisters, busy at play and at work.  They were in the boys and crafts room, even Anneleore, the eldest, fifteen, who was cross-stitching a picture for the Christmas Man.

Knot Five: Believing in the Christmas Man

Annelore had been working on the cross-stitch picture of a Santa Claus tramping across the snow, since October.  She would have made something for the Christ-child, who was the one who came on Christmas Even; and all the presents and treats actually came from him.  But Father Christmas was the one who read the Christmas Wish-lists and he directed the elves and the toy workshops.

Annelore was fifteen years old, but in those days, you still believed in the Christmas Man.  Why?  Because he was real, and you still knew better, if you had been born in the olden days.  It is true that he stops coming to you when you stop believing in him.

Knot Six: Across and down the List

Across and down the Wish List, there were pictures you saw, very colourful and organized like a picture-book.  There were eight pictures, because there were eight children.  Their last name was Ashenborn, and this was written in tall, nine-year-old’s writing at the top in the right-hand corner, along with their address.

What might eight lovely, well-behaved children ask for as a present on Christmas Eve – in German, on Holy Night . . . in the olden days they were of course very classic toys.  No video games or trips to Disney World or for more time with Mummy and Daddy.

The pictures showed you:

A baby doll with brown curls.

A rocking horse.

A spinning top with music notes on it, blue and green.

A golden frame with a picture in it – though you could not tell of what the picture was.

A castle.

A jar of ink: black.

A cake, just a round plain one but on a silver platter and red berries all around it for decoration.  Plain cakes often taste the best.

And the last picture, in the bottom right corner of the paper: a parrot.  But a green one, with a few violet feathers.

Knot Seven: Gudrun’s Wish

The baby doll you saw in the picture. However she wanted the baby doll that she had since as far back as she could remember.  It was a doll with brown curls and Gudrun had carried it around with her everywhere.  And at the table she also had a high-chair to sit in, right beside Gudrun.  This doll was called Stinky Doll.  She had never had a bath ever, and her clothes were never washed.  She had fallen in puddles several times and had been adopted for a while by a mother cat and her newborn kittens, living in a box. 

Since the beginning of the cold weather, Anna had gone missing.  She had been wearing her night gown and white night cap and only one sock.  “Please all you in Heaven, please find my Stinky Doll.”  And she didn’t want a new one, when she was asked.  She got very cross when she was asked if she wanted a new one.

Knot Eight: Maximilians’ Wish

A rocking horse.  One with brown spots and no saddle because he wanted to ride bareback like the Indians in America, just how he had seen in an American comic book his older brothers had once borrowed from the library at school and brought home.  Perhaps this year, lots of children were asking for rocking horses without saddles on them – but there weren’t many children at all who borrowed books from the library.  And they did not know there was a comic book there from America – they would never have dreamed of it or there to be any comic book in the library at all when the library mostly only had books to study for the older children’s entrance exams to secondary education – in Germany, called, the Gymnasium.

Knot Nine: Frieder’s Spinning Top

The next one on the list was a picture of a spinning top.  It was described in words as a middle sized one which would reflect blue and green music notes going round in a perfect ring, all around the room.  And it shouldn’t be only to look at.  Music needed to be heard, not only seen.

Frieder had brown hair and eyes that were sometimes grey-green and sometimes grey-blue.  All around those very round, beautiful eyes were dark long lashes, and the longest and the thickest out of all his brothers and sisters. If you were a grownup and you might find little Frieder at play and ask him was doing such an odd activity for, he’d turn to look up at you and you would actually believe, in his eyes and face, that he meant it for the common good and harmony of humankind.  He loved colour and he loved light and imagined music that only he could hear, coming through translucent colours, through glass and reflections.

Frieder had figured out, from experiments holding different coloured glass in the sunlight coming from the nursery window that the elves in Heaven would need to use coloured glass for this spinning top; namely blue and green.  And Katarina did not forget to write down this instruction for the Christmas Man to follow.  She also added Frieder’s hope that it would not be too complicated or difficult to invent a coloured light reflection which rang with music you could listen to.  He wanted it to be the music that he imagined but had not yet heard for real and for everybody else to hear, too.   

If the toy maker elves in Heaven would scorn Frieder for wishful thinking this year, it was only the first time Frieder ever had wished something you could not get out of the shops.

Knot Ten: The Sensible Girl

Camilla, a straight but fluffy toffee-blond haired girl, pretty but only as far as it went for people, who are sensible and rather serious, was at eight years old and born before Frieder.  All she wished for was a picture in a frame.  Now, perhaps she was not the very most sensible of all sensible little girls, for a picture in a frame was not useful unless it had a picture of an ancestor in it, or of the ruling king or queen.  Or maybe, of the Christmas Man so he could be revered in a special spot on the wall, all year long even in July.  Camilla was not good at drawing, but she made good judgements about art.  So the picture in the frame she wished for needed to be a beautiful picture, in good taste and where everything moved for real inside.  If a painting like this had never been painted before, then it would have to be painted now, for Camilla, as a special Christmas Present.  Then more could be painted, for other children, thereafter – but the first one needed to be started.

What child, you might wonder, would dare to wish for something that everybody knew did not exist?  It did not even exist in any story.  And it wasn’t anything that was a popular fancy of imagination such as a clock that would take you back in time.  And this story about Katarina and her brothers and sisters was being written before any movies you may have seen where portraits really move and talk.    

Camilla was being plainly rational and sensible as ever, but to her it was the most sensible thing to ask Father Christmas for presents that were not the usual kind you could just get from the shops on Earth.  Father Christmas also needed the children to give him ideas for new inventions.  The toy maker elves might get angry if they would have to make the same kind of toy after the other, and do the same thing year after year over the centuries.

Camilla, though she was sensible, still was a wishful thinker and had a wishful imagination.  She knew she had to be a wishful thinker with a wishful imagination or the Christmas Man might suspect she was not a normal child and send her medicine for Christmas.  Medicine for how you can kill off the killers of your imagination.  The killers of your imagination were a bacteria you could catch from grownups.  There weren’t vaccines yet, in those days.  Some children were more vulnerable to this bacteria than others, and it wasn’t their fault at all, it was the fault of the grownups.  Sometimes, though, they thought that everybody should catch this bacteria.

You could catch it from talk and from serious frowns disliking imagination and the way children are.  Very often, a child with already this disease would also spread it to other children.  It was very sad, for you would have to live the rest of your life as a grown-up.

A healthy immune system, however, could keep the bacteria counts low and not let the symptoms show.  Camilla was only a sensible girl and not exactly a grownup yet because her immune system was pretty good, though her brothers and sisters were much stronger.

Knot Ten: A Transport into Fairytale Land

There was castle drawn on the Christmas Wish List.  This was Katarina’s hoped for present.  She asked for the construction of a castle – only child-size, with just enough space inside to crawl into, and when you were inside, you were transported to another world.  Katarina drew the picture of this.  It was not her dream castle in detail – she would have to draw a picture covering an entire sheet of paper for this. 

Katarina had to specify, in writing, that she wished for the world to be back in time and also in another world.  It had to be a world that was of fairytale characters.  They didn’t have to be fairytale characters that are popularly known of in this world.  She said it would be more wonderful if they were ones nobody had ever heard of before.  Princesses, princes, knights, talking animals and many strange, wonderful creatures – none of them scary though, unless they were part of a story that ended in a happy ending.  And there were ribbons, sashes and tea cups that had magical ways.  There would also be a different sort of ink to write with, Katarina added.

Knot Eleven: Too Intelligent to Do Homework

Katarina did not admit to the Christmas Man, though, that the idea about the magical ink was not her own original idea.  It had been taken from her brother and it was his Christmas wish.  Katarina knew that the Christmas Man knew everything.  He looked down from a cloud, through a telescope to see every child’s behaviour, starting on the first of Advent. He had seen and listened to Katarina her older brother Albrecht once talking about the magic ink, and it had been Albrecht’s idea.

Albrecht had been born before Katarina.  He was skinny and maybe was beginning to have a bad posture which would be called to straighten whenever his mother would see him.  He hated homework.  He would rather work on his wood figurines or go out playing with his friends and older brother Johann.  He was a clever boy, and he was the smartest boy in his class in many subjects, but he said homework did not make him learn a single thing more or better, or at least nothing he thought was sensible, compared to how much more sensible it was for him to make the best of his young years being creative and making pocket money and helping the homeless.

So, if there was a jar of ink the Christmas Man had up in heaven which one drop of would write down everything which you could write down for your homework but just wouldn’t, then it should please be given to clever young Albrecht Ashenborn, it was much needed.

Knot Twelve: Cake to Share with Everyone

After the black ink jar Katarina had drawn and described, came the wish of the eldest boy, Johann.  He was thirteen years old.  He wished for a delicious cake.  First of all, it had to be extra specially delicious.  It had to be better than even Mother’s baking.  Maybe this showed how Johann could sometimes be a smug and challenging boy.  Maybe it was not a cake that was really his wish, but only to challenge the Christmas Man because he was old enough to.  And the poor angels in heaven who worked for the Heavenly Bakery – they had ever so much to make during the Christmas Season already, especially for themselves and everyone in heaven who spent afternoons sitting on clouds and eating up bowls of Christmas baking, since the first of December. 

Perhaps Johann meant to tease his mother, and did not mean to challenge anybody.  Mother Hildegard was invited around all year long by people to their houses for afternoon tea and cake because they knew Mother Hildegard would always bake them one of her cakes.  And her own children would only get cake to eat on an afternoon where she wasn’t invited out.  Nobody knew her secret recipe, not even Annelore the eldest and not even Liesel the maid.  Nobody was allowed in the kitchen when Mother was baking her special cake.  Well, if the bakery in heaven knew an even better secret recipe than Mother Hildegard did, then this would be Johann’s present on Christmas Eve, please.  And he would share it that night with everyone, leaving not a crumb. 

Katarina wrote, saying,

“Actually, it is not the first most important thing that this cake be the best tasting of all cakes ever.  What the cake mainly has to be is one that can make you float, in the air – at least until New Year’s Eve.  You can still stand on the ground though, for times you need to, if you exerted your will power.”

Christmas was a wonderful time, and it was the holidays – no school.  This was just Johann’s whimsical fancy for how you could make the most of the Christmas magic while it was around, floating in the air.  And why not float in the air?  If you were stuffed from all the dinners you had to eat at your house and going to other people’s houses, at least if you were floating in the air, you could keep doing somersaults over and over your barrel-tummy.

Knot Thirteen: Annelore

Last, but of course not least, was Annelore’s wish, the eldest of the eight.  If her wish be fulfilled, most likely it would be only if the Christ-Child, mild but the highest authority in Heaven, might tell the Christmas Man that Annelore in deed did need help with the children.  The Christmas Man only gave toys, and every wish a child asked him needed to be a toy, or at least accredited as something that would be lots of fun.  It also could be something to eat, and it could be something magical, and the Christmas Man was very strict about this.  But what Annelore asked for was neither a toy nor something you could eat and it was not magical either and it was not something that was a good idea for a new invention either.  What the Christmas Man did if a child asked for a present that did not fit any of these qualifications, he gave them a toy that had been the first wish that child had asked for back when they had been a baby.

Annelore was already fifteen but her younger brothers and sisters still kept her from growing up.  And she also looked like a pretty porcelain doll that had only just outgrown the regular size for a doll.  She did not act like a doll, though.  You could not tell just by looking at her that she was too outspoken and clever.  Only by a little mole to the bottom left of her lower lip could you see the sign of a person who was too outspoken.  The maid Liesel who came from the mountains had caught sight of this right away when she first saw Annelore, and it was this mole while made a young girl too outspoken.

Annelore had begun Secondary Education because she was very clever – and there were not many girls who could do this.  But she had been forced to leave because the professor would not tolerate Annelore’s obstinate criticism of the system and refusal to part with her own suggestions of how things could be done and the assignments she wanted to  do – which needed to be different from everybody else’s, she said.  (It was just like this at home.)  Her professor told her she should go back and just stay home and make unique, innovative individuals out of her seven brothers and sisters, but she could not stay at High School and do this to her fellow students and herself.

And so Annelore followed this advice and counsel.  She replied though, to the professor, that she did not need to do anything to make her brothers and sisters unique, innovative individuals.  They had been born that way.

Annelore sometimes made her parents wish she had never been born, but she still loved them.  It was just that grownups in those days did not normally admit they were sorry for hurting people.  They still punished criminals by killing them in public squares.  Annelore just still resented how she had gotten the cane before when she was younger.  She was too old for it now, that’s why she got away with a lot.  Nevertheless, she still gave her parents hugs and kisses and warm bonding as ever she had when she was little and she loved her brothers and sisters all under protective, gentle and doting wings and they loved her.  She was not a disciplinarian with them; that was why it was a rough time for her a lot of the time to make them listen to her, unless they were told an instruction at least twice.

This was why Annelore, who had to mind the flock when they came home from school, asked the Christmas Man for a parrot. 

It should not a magical parrot, and the parrot would not need to be able to do anything at all except repeat Annelore’s governess instructions – and sheep-dog’s herding calls – and cat cautions and raven advice after her.  Such as: 

“Time to put away your toys and your work, our boat to dreamland is embarking.  All aboard, ahoy!”  Or, “It’s time to do your homework.  Drop your drawing pencils right now.”  Another one: “Everybody, there is no wake-up story this morning.  Everybody stop talking, stop jumping and go back to sleep.  God back to sleep, I’m counting to three.”

A parrot, in those days, only pirates and rich people could have as pets.  Annelore had never seen a live-parrot before in her life.  She only saw them in illustrations and had heard of them.

What an unusual family this would be in deed, if all the wishes of these children would come true, especially unusual for back then in the olden days.

And you can bet your trainers and your Velcro straps that in those days, no children made wishes for presents like these.  Just these our friends, the Ashenborns.  And you can bet the reason for why nobody wanted to write their Christmas Wish List.  Last year and the years before when the children had thought of their ideas for Christmas presents, grownups told them they were very nice.  Some had laughed and said there was no way they were going to get presents such as these.  The Christmas Man was a grown-up, they said. 

So far, he had not given them any of their strange inventions.  He gave them regular presents you could get from the shops or from the town toy makers instead.  Yet, every year, they would still write down just what they wished for most.  A Christmas Wish List would not be a Christmas Wish List if you wrote down things you did not really wish for.  Some of them were not even inventions, they were dreams the children dreamed of all year long.  Katarina herself was not so inventive like her brothers.  She just dreamed of fairytales, stories, and a land in the past and far away which was more beautiful than could even be imagined.  And if “necessity is the mother of invention,”, then “a dreamy heart makes invention a necessity”.

Katarina needed to go to this beautiful, wondrous land in the past and far away.  And so she invented a miniature castle that would take you there.  It only had to be built, that was all.  And, of course, put under the Christmas tree.

Knot Fourteen

Johann was not fourteen year old, and so he was still young enough to play with wooden soldiers.  They were wooden soldiers, painted with thick paint of red, white, blue and black, just in the right order.  They had swords held at their sides.  The soldiers had been made by Johann himself.  Only one had been bought from the toyshop, years ago and from this, Johann had copied twenty-seven more wood soldiers.  Ten of them had been sold by the homeless, and two at school.  So Johann was left with fifteen as his own.  He shared them, of course.  But out of all the children in the house, only he showed he really might become an army general one day.  Except, he told people, he would not become one until he would have constructed a kind shield for all his army officers to wear – and for himself to wear in front of you with one hand – which with one wave in a circle would make you disappear from the front line on the battle field and reappear at home sitting in front of the fire.

You would still be wearing your soldier’s uniform, and holding your shield, and that was so you could look in the reflection of the shield on the outer side.  You would see yourself wearing the soldier’s hat and you could see yourself smiling about having disappeared from the battlefield on time before your hat could have been blown away – either by the wind or by a gun shot.

Johann was not exactly a coward.  If he were a coward, he would not been brave enough to share his far-fetched idea of a shield that would make you disappear.  Johann knew it might really become invented one day.  Of course, he laughed about it himself, and so nobody at school thought he was mad.

Knot Fifteen: The Mad Soldier

You did not need to have wild, impossible ideas to be mad.  There was one wooden soldier, out of the fifteen in Johann’s set of wood soldiers that was mad.  And he did not think of any mad ideas.  He did them.  He could not possibly think of anything – he had no brain.  He was only made of wood.  But he moved on his own.  He refused to stand in a line with the other army soldiers Johann would set up.  This wood soldier would bow over, at the waist and stay like that, until next day when Johann would find him in the wood soldier box back to normal.  But beware.  If you should set him back in a line with the other soldiers – there was no exception to the rule: he’d stand on one foot, all of a sudden, and stay like that till next day.  Or, he’d stick out his one leg to the side.  It was such a peculiar, abnormal thing for a toy, something made of wood, to do, wasn’t it?  Johann told of this to no one, except, all his brothers and sisters knew of course but they were made to vow they were not to tell anybody. 

It was top secret, it was.  There was a mad soldier out of Johann’s soldiers.  It really had to have a mind of its own.  And this was what made him mad.

“Do you think this mad wooden soldier might be repaired in heaven at the toyshop there?”  Johann asked Katarina after he had read across and down the Christmas Wish List, with a smile and a nod here and here.  “Do you suppose I could write a little note in the corner here to ask the Christmas Man about it?”

Katarina took the Christmas wish list from her brother and frowned at him.

“It’s my List.  I made it look like this.  I like it just the way it is right now, and there is absolutely no space anywhere for you to write a little note.

“But why don’t you leave the made soldier in the window, this night, where we’ll leave the Wish List?  If the angels pick up the Wish List, they might take the soldier too.  Put a tag on him saying: ‘TO BE REPAIRED IN YOUR TOYSHOP. PLEASE MAKE HIM NORMAL.’”

Johann set about to do just this. 

And that night, holding a night light in one hand, walking slowly so the flame would not die out, Katarina set the Christmas Wish List and the mad wood soldier on the window will.  Then she crawled into her place in the bed where the other three siblings were already fast asleep and one was talking in her dream. 

Katarina was the last to wake up the next morning.  So it was little Gudrun who discovered a strange but wonderful-looking baking paper parcel, tied with and a green ribbon, at the window.  Gudrun remembered from last year, when she was two, this was what he angels left behind when you placed your Christmas Wish List on the window sill for them to take up to Heaven.

Knot Sixteen: Forgetting It’s the Christmas Season

“The angels took it!  Annelore, it’s gone!  And the mad soldier is gone too!”  Gudrun ran over to Annelore, just getting up, looking tall wearing a long white nightgown.  Annelore did not have curly hair naturally, and she wanted to have curly hair.  So she slept every night with rag strips twisted and tied all around her head.  They were all different colours, these rag strips and they looked like bows everywhere.  Gudrun thought it very becoming.

Annelore hugged little Gudrun down at her side.  “Yes, little Gudrun, you see how the angels are watching out for us all the time.  And they’re so thoughtful, when they take something from us with them up to Heaven, they leave something behind for us.  A little parcel of their heavenly delicious baking.  They have marvellous bakeries up there in the clouds.  They leave the clouds rather untidy, with biscuits – all different kinds – scattered everywhere.  I hope the biscuits they’ve put in this parcel isn’t what they’ve picked up from the floor.  Their floor is just clouds, and clouds are so clean, anyway, you can never sweep or mop them.  Let’s bring these down for breakfast and show Vater and Mutter, shall we?”

And Gudrun nodded - the thrill and bliss of magical mystery already captivating her – you could tell – from head to toe.

It was perhaps only she who in the next few days until the 23^rd of December remembered every day that it was soon to be Christmas.  The other children forgot it was even the season – at least most of the time.

Why would such a thing happen?  Nowadays, sure, you can ignore the lights and decoration you see everywhere when you go out every day, and everybody is talking about it.  But in those days, the time before Christmas, there was no carolling and there were no Santa Claus hats popping out of the crowds – there were no crowds like we have nowadays beginning in November when all the wise Christmas Shoppers begin.  In those days, there weren’t even any Christmas lights, they did not have electricity.  Most people could not afford to buy presents.  You might wonder: hey, how on earth did people get into the Christmas Spirit?  How could you without standing in long ques inside stores and singing Christmas carols waiting everyone’s turn to pay?  What was the Christmas Spirit if it wasn’t generosity?  Being in the mood for buying presents for your entire circle of friends, your family and anyone you were going to have to meet over the holidays? 

And will you believe it?  It was usually not till Christmas Eve or a day or two before that anyone got a Christmas tree in their home.  And instead of the availability of Christmas sweets and decorations in stores starting already in October, usually it would only start December 14.  But who wanted sweets and decorations in those days when scarcely anybody could afford them anyway?  That was why most people turned to believe in the Heavenly Bakery and in angels who delivered them, and Father Christmas.  Nowadays not many people believe in them – not even children, and so he does not come, and everybody has to buy everything from the stores instead.

 And in those days, Christmas stress only took place at home.  For them it was baking batches and batches of Christmas biscuits till you drop.  Crafting together decorations in mass productions and wishing you had magic elves to help you.  And you would need to be making bottles of perfumes for Mommy and maybe a gold watch for Daddy because you couldn’t afford anything in the shops.  The materials to make them you got for free.  They were handed out by the shops and factories.  But you had to go there to get them.

That was why Katarina and her brothers and sisters were so super busy they forgot it was going to be Christmas Eve, sooner and sooner, day by day.  Their checklists of whom they had to make presents for still were not halfway ticked off . . . Until Christmas Eve dawned.  On the dawn of Christmas Eve, Little Frieder, the peaceful, angelic youngest boy, woke up having fallen asleep in his chair late at night.  His black screen of lashes scarcely let him see through.  He was trying to look at his hands – where did they go?  He had remembered he had been working on a little present for Camilla.  Then he could see it!  The straw star he had been weaving till he had fallen asleep was all finished!   Frieder had finished it in his sleep!  He had only been at the beginning of it, he remembered. 

He suddenly hopped out of his chair and found his list on the floor, entitled: “Presents For My Loved Ones” and crossed off Camilla on it.  Now there were only seven more gifts to go.  Frieder did not know it was already Christmas Eve.  He did not know it was the day to panic.  So he fell fast asleep.

Knot Seventeen: At Christmas

Later that morning, all the children were awake and getting ready to go to school and looking forward to know their Mathematics Quiz results from the day before, when Father appeared suddenly, standing tall and always in the shape of what Father Christmas must look like (which was not fat, in those days, but like a tall Russian Cossack), in the doorway of the workshop nursery.  He was a little severe, his ruddy bushy eyebrows showing.  But his mouth gave away some perhaps mischievous jolliness.

“Vater, you’re supposed to be off to work by now.  Why are you still here?”  Camilla asked because she always wanted every circumstance, if it was not making usual, acceptable sense, to be arrested right away.

Father answered, “Children, what are you doing getting ready to go to school for?  You’re not allowed to go though I know it’s still a school day.  It’s Christmas Eve today!  I myself am supposed to go to work, but I’m not going.”

The children cheered and cheered, jumping up and down and Vater turned some of them round and round in the air.  Then he told them they’d all better go back to finishing making the presents they were making for everybody, because pretty soon it would be too late.  They would all have to go to church.  And everybody was going to have to donate the Christmas presents they had made to give to the church charity instead of to whom they were meant for.  And there would be no presents this year for anybody, because giving to the poor came first – at least, so it was in the order of events that day: church at six o’clock and then the Christmas celebration under the Christmas tree at home at eight, and then Christmas dinner.

But then, the children watched Vater’s serious face with its creases between the ruddy eyebrows lighten to relief and then to mischief and then a broad merry laugh.  Vater had only been joking.

“At Christmas,” said he, after everybody’s relief and their not being sure whether to laugh or tell their father this was very wrong, “The burden of giving to each other makes up entirely for not giving to the poor, if you cannot give to the poor.”

Knot Eighteen:  Global Issues in Those Days

To this, one child, with an elf-like smile on his face, spoke up and it was something naughty but true.  “We are the poor.”  It was Maximilian.  His few freckles darkened and made his face look dirty just then.  “We haven’t got a coach with seven steeds to lead it and no plumes standing on their heads.”

 “And we haven’t got seven steeds with black patches over their eyes and shining gold bites to chew on,” added Frieder, with acted disdain.

“We haven’t got even six steeds.”  It was Gudrun, and her eyes became bigger and bigger and everybody watched as she continued – she was counting on her fingers and meaning to be really cute. “We haven’t got five, we haven’t got four, we haven’t got three, and not two.  Just one.”

“No we haven’t!” retorted Camilla.  “We haven’t got even one.  We don’t need one.”  Her nose went up in the air as if someone was tickling a feather just under it.  “Horses drop things on the street that smell.”  Camilla was a clever little biscuit.  Now was her chance for everybody to hear.  “These emit gases that rise high over the city, in the air, and this makes fog.  Fog is – “ 

“No it doesn’t make fog” Albrecht cut in, quite childishly for his age, eleven.  “Horses cause smog.  That’s the new word for it, Teacher said.  Fog is old-fashioned, Camilla.”

There was no sticking out tongues because the Ashenborn children were not rude children.

“Correct, correct,” Johann certified with a pretend seal stamp, stamping it on the table.  In those days, this is what a school teacher used to correct papers.  It would make a red seal, of wax, just like what you’ve seen in movies.  It was used on ships later to be besieged by pirates.  It was the way a captain or a king certified important documents.

Albrecht thought correcting seals a nuisance; and Albrecht easily thought anything a nuisance.  “I don’t want a stamp, Johann.  I’d rather be wrong instead – what I said wasn’t correct, it wasn’t!”

Annelore wished everyone to steer back to their discussion about poverty.  She tilted her head to the side, and the loops of braids hanging to the sides of her head followed.  And her grown-up doll-like face showed her expectation for everybody to follow the laws of gravity just the same when she talked, because she was being very serious.  “The rich people should not let their steeds and carriages go to waste.  If they should just cast them away, where should they go?  If they should go to the rubbish heaps, all the poor would get them and that would cause a havoc.”

“Yes,” sizzled Albrecht.  “Then we’ll get them.  And then we’ll have lots of horse meat to eat and all the people in the slums will have lots too – to roast, to dry and salt and last for years.  And make the carriages their new homes.  There wouldn’t be any slums anymore.  Everybody would be living in carriages and go travelling around the world.”  Albrecht turned to look at Father and see if he had made a fair and accurate prediction.

But Annelore was in charge.  “Yes, that’s all very good, Albrecht, but why don’t the carriages and horses stay with their rightful owners.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with smog.  I’ve heard it makes our town warmer in winter.  And in summer, it makes the rich people go out and move to the country side, which is healthier for them to begin with.

“If the smog could one day make it hot as summer, all year long, then, all the steeds and most of the carriages would just stay home in the stables.  Then what lovely clean streets we would have . . .

Annelore suddenly realized her train of ideas had picked up the wrong cargo – and it was about to wobble off the track.  So she pushed it over and off.

“Well, but then, all the steeds and carriages would have to come back on the streets again.  Right?  How will the hot weather inside the city last without a cover of smog on top?”

The children were only amused and picturing everything vividly and in colour.  Their faces were bright and looking at each other like this was the funnest debate they had had so far about the topic we know nowadays as Global Warming.

Annelore fell quiet and cast down her eyes, because she herself was rather confused about whether Global Warming was good or not.

Albrecht noticed how she had become quiet and insecure, and so he gave her a nudge and a grin and rallied overtop the children’s amused voices:  “And that is why smog is necessary!”  He sounded indifferent and intelligent even when he was jeering like this.

Then, Frieder’s voice rang clear and reflective as a blue green reflection from the sun.  “This is why horses are good for the city.”  Frieder was a defender of all animals.  “Only, they must have a turn, every day, running free in the fields, every one of them.  If only I had a horse, this is where I would bring it every afternoon to a beautiful green meadow with plenty of fresh herbs and grasses and flowers to eat.  Even if I’d have to cross one end of the town to another to get to this meadow.”

Katarina was for the welfare of horses and for unicorns.  She added, with a dreamy smile, “Yes, and horses need fresh air.”

To which some of the children hooted and tooted even more, and others smiled and agreed.

To be continued . . .