For many Christmases it was one family member’s responsibility to pick out a Christmas book, which we read on Christmas night by the tree.
The person selecting a book rotated between my three young children, my husband and me. Early on it was The Grinch, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Polar Express and other illustrated books —I still have all of them lined on my shelves.
But as my kids turned into teens, I took the responsibility of finding stories. I discovered a copy of Once Upon a Christmas a collection of Christmas stories by Pearl S. Buck, published by the John Day Company. She had penned 13 short stories and, in the introduction, spoke about when her children were little that “every Christmas was as joyous as we could make it. . .”
“All that is left of these years, however, when the children are grown, married and making their own Christmas joys, is the handful of Christmas stories I wrote for my children in those days, for my grandchildren now, and indeed for all children,” she wrote.
I thought of Buck and her stories, as my children start to establish their own Christmas traditions. As we celebrate with them, our Palisades house feels lonely.
But it also means that time continues – and there is a need for my husband and I to shift to a new role. Everything I so loved about the holiday will now manifest itself differently – and that’s okay.
One Buck story is particularly poignant about the passing of time: The Christmas Ghost. I’ve summarized it, below.
The story is about a family, including their six-year-old son Jimpsey, who recently moved from the city to the country and are getting ready for Christmas. The home they are living in used to belong to Timothy Stillwagon.
The family’s hired man Mr. Higgens explained. “. . .he kept his cows in the barn here, and every Christmas Eve the two of us would walk together from the barn down the bridge, at midnight, mind you, after he’d trimmed the tree for his children. I’d trim the tree for my children, too, my wife and me, and then I’d walk up to the hill to see his tree, and he’d walk back with me to see my tree, because my house is there by the bridge.”
“Why did you walk to see your trees?” Jimpsey asked.
“Because,” Mr. Higgens said, “whichever of the two of us had the finer tree, the other was supposed to buy him a cup of hot coffee at the village diner.”
“Did you ever have the best tree, Mr. Higgens?” Jimpsey asked.
Mr. Higgins laughed in big chuckles. “Neither one nor the other of us ever got the cup of coffee, on account of we always thought each had the prettier tree. The end of that was that we’d walk back and forth betwist the barn and the bridge arguing about it, until we could walk no more on account of the cold.”
Mr. Higgins tells Jimpsey that he is happy that Jimpsey’s family is living in the Stillwagon house. Higgins’ children are grown and gone away and his wife is dead. Higgens says the new family will give him and Timothy Stillwagon something to talk about.
“You still talk to him?” Jimpsey asked.
“Oh, sure,” Mr. Higgens said cheerfully, “him and me, we walk the road together, just as we did on Christmas Eve., me in my flesh and bones, and he in his ghost.”
After Mr. Higgens left, Jimpsey reported to his father about the ghost. His father replied, “He’s a lonely old man and maybe he dreams of ghosts to keep him company.”
On Christmas Eve, Jimpsey wakes up in the middle of the night, looks out his window and sees a small figure walk out of the barn and down the road to the bridge. He thinks it might be a ghost.
He decides to go look for it, dresses and runs across the meadow. When he reaches the bridge, the ghost asks him what he’s doing out in the middle of the night.
“The voice was not the voice of a ghost – not at all. It was the voice of Mr. Higgens. The wind blew off the ghost’s hat and under it was the face of Mr. Higgins, looking very cold and wrinkled.
“I wanted to see a ghost,” Jimpsey said.
“Well now, Jimpsey,” Mr. Higgens said. “I’m ashamed I said there was a real ghost, when it’s only Timothy Stillwagon’s memory that I walk with on Christmas Eve. I guess I wanted to believe he walks with me every Christmas. Of course he can’t walk in flesh and blood, the way he used to, and so I just made him into a ghost, because even his ghost would be more than nothing at all, you know. Yes, I guess it’s only a memory I walk with after all.”
Higgens continues, “. . .and we grew up and got married and had other little boys like you, and then one day it was all over and only me left – me and a memory. Timothy’s not dead for me, Jimpsey. Come Christmas Eve, I walk the road from the barn to the bridge, and he walks with me as if he was alive again. Call him a ghost or not – I see him this minute, as he was alive, because we were friends. As long as you remember somebody, he’s still alive – in you, if nowhere else – eh, Tim, old boy?”
Mr. Higgens walks the small boy home and tells him Merry Christmas. Just before Jimpsey gets back in bed, he looks out the window and sees Mr. Higgens, very small and bent, walking down the road to the bridge.
“So, now,” Jimpsey told himself, “some Christmas Eve when I’m as big as daddy, maybe I’ll look out this window and see the ghost of Mr. Higgens walking down that road. Only it won’t be a ghost. It’ll be my memory of Mr. Higgens.”
Thank you for sharing this!