The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas
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O
n the first of December, seven-year-old Vicky Austin's favorite time of year begins. She and her family do one special thing every day of the month to prepare for Christmas—from baking cookies to setting up the crèche to making a special Christmas mobile. But this year, they're also preparing for the birth of a new brother or sister, due at the beginning of January. Vicky is worried that the baby will come early and that Mother will be in the hospital for Christmas. What kind of Christmas Eve will it be without Mother to help them hang up stockings and sing everyone to sleep with carols?
The love between the members of the Austin family shines as bright as a Christmas star in this story, which features twenty-four days of holiday traditions merrily illustrated by Jill Weber.
D
ECEMBER is probably my favorite month.
And on the first day of December we were out of bed before Mother came to call us.
I ran to the window to see if maybe it had snowed during the night. But the ground was still bare, the grass tawny, with a few last leaves fluttering over it. The trees were shaking dark branches against a grey sky.
“Any snow?” Suzy asked. Suzy's my little sister. She's only four, and I've just turned seven. I can read. Of course, so can John. He's ten. I answered, “Not a smidgin. And the sky isn't white enough for snow today. But it doesn't matter—it's the first day of December!”
One of the reasons we love December so is Christmas, not only that Christmas is coming, but that we
do something special every single day of the month to prepare for the twenty-fifth day.
John was up and out of the house before Suzy and I were dressed. He has a paper route, every morning before breakfast, and he's allowed to ride all over the village on his bike. I'm the middle Austin and the ugly duckling. If I had more time to remember and think about it, I'd be very sad. I'm skinny and as tall as the eight-year-olds and my legs are so long I keep falling. And I was awake early because this was a specially special December for me. I was to be the angel in the Pageant at church on Christmas Eve—the biggest and most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me. I was to wear a golden halo and a flowing white costume and wings, the loveliest wings anyone could imagine. Mother made them.
Suzy is four and she's the baby and all cuddly and beautiful and her hair is curly and the color of sunshine. She has great shining eyes that are the purple-blue of the sky just after sunset. She has a rosebud for a mouth, and she isn't skinny; she's just right.
We dressed quickly, because even if there wasn't any snow it was cold, and we ran downstairs just as John came in from delivering his papers, his cheeks shiny-red as apples from the cold. The dogs came running in after him, barking: Mr. Rochester, our big brindle Great Dane, and Colette, our little silver poodle. They're very good friends.
Our kitchen is a big wandery room that turns corners and has unexpected nooks and crannies. In the dining room section in the winter the fire crackles merrily, and this morning the smell of applewood mingled with the smell of pancakes and maple syrup and hot chocolate. One of the cats was sleeping, curled up on a cushion in front of the fire. Our father had already had his breakfast and gone out; he's a doctor and Mother said he'd gone out several hours ago to deliver a baby.
At that we looked at Mother, and the lovely bulge in her dress, and Mother smiled and said, “Daddy thinks the baby should come along sometime the first week in January.”
“And then I won't be the baby anymore!” Suzy said. “And I'll help you with the new baby.”
Suzy's mind flits from thought to thought, just as she herself does, like a butterfly. Now she asked, “What's the surprise for the first day of December?”
It wasn't completely a surprise, because each year it's an Advent calendar, but it's partly a surprise, because it's always a new one. Advent means
coming,
and it's the four weeks that lead up to Christmas. Mother and Daddy read serious things in the evening, and talk about them, a book called
The Four Last Things,
for instance.
This year the calendar was a beautiful one, and had come all the way across the ocean, from Denmark. We take turns every day opening one of the windows to see what surprise picture is waiting behind. The twenty-fourth day, when the windows open, they reveal the stable, and Mary and Joseph and the baby.
Today Suzy opened, because she's the youngest
and goes first. Inside was a baby angel, who looked just like 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.”

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