My Favorite Christmas Story

For the last few years, I have been without kids to share this story with. When I was married and got to see my nieces every Christmas I would have one of them snuggle up on my left and one on my right. They would hold the book and turn the pages while I read it to them. After a few years of not reading it to anyone but myself, I settled for reading it to Steph. It was nice to read it out loud, but it just wasn't the same. I think I will share it with you.

It is the book "Red Ranger Came Calling" by Berkeley Breathed. Pick up a copy if you can find one. Go hardback with this one. It is one you will want to keep in good condition.



Here is an excerpt:

Christmas, 1939
During the Depression years, before the second war, my folks would banish me from East Orange, New Jersey, to Michigan for the school year and then ship me to upstate New York for summer camp. The lone remaining month, for Christmas, would find me on a train to my aunt Vy's house, on Vashon, a damp little island somewhere off the country's upper left-hand corner It was an out-of-the-way corner, but a good place to grow things, where strawberries and sour-faced little boys might ripen up sweeter. Or so my mother told me each time she sent me away.

But on Christmas Eve of 1939, I'd grown no sweeter at all. My prize eluded me: an Official Buck Tweed Two-Speed Crime-Stopper Star-Hopper bicycle. It sat there gleaming in the Vashon Hardware Store window, tantalizing earthlings with its spine-tingling glamour.

The Red Ranger of Mars - me - visited this place daily, like a cow returning to the salt lick. There I would loiter, miserable in my bicycle poverty, kept company by Amelia, Aunt Vy's Dalmatian wiener-dog mix. Most of the time Amelia just snoozed nearby, dreaming, like me, of other places and other lives far away.

But it was 1939, and although Christmas Eve had arrived, dreams were unaffordable. Amelia and I headed home with mine far behind in a store window.

As usual, I looked for delays on the walk home. Aunt Vy would be waiting, and we made each other equally uncomfortable, so I saw no reason to hurry. That evening's detour brought me and Amelia past the ramshackle lighthouse perched high in the mist on Point Robinson. As always, we paused to consider the old house's legend.

Island old-timers insisted that its unseen occupant, old Saunder Clos, was actually Santa Claus himself...the real McCoy of childish fancy migrated down from the North to spend his final days in secretive retirement on Vashon Island.

It took folks far more fruity than the Red Ranger of Mars to be tricked into believing such twaddle. Like many my age, I knew that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny were just that many more promises hatched by those who weren't very good at keeping them.

As we turned to leave, an astonishingly squat little man no bigger than me rushed past us toward the old lighthouse. He carried an overnight carpetbag, which bumped along behind him. The tiny man smiled weakly and tipped his hat, revealing pointy ears. Something flowery needed to be said by the Red Ranger of Mars, but in my shock, all that came out was, "Mister, you look like a turnip."

I could not recall ever actually seeing a genuine elf, nor calling one a vegetable, but I was certain I just had. An elf. You-know-who's elf. To a dyed-in-the-wool everything doubter such as myself, it was mind-boggling.



I love this story for several reasons. One, it is written for children and adults. Two, the artwork is phenomenal. And three, one of my nieces was "a dyed-in-the-wool everything doubter" and she would come away from the reading of this book slightly less convinced that Santa Claus was fake (you'll see why if you manage to procure a copy of this book).



I hope everyone is having a good holiday season.