Sleeping Under the Christmas Tree

My favourite part of Christmas is wrapping presents. It wasn't until I wrapped my first gift only a day before Christmas Eve that I felt like it was Christmas time, and I think that's because giving is such a vital part of the "Christmas Spirit." I stayed up with Sarkis, Aprilla, Alice, and Jak wrapping dozens and dozens of presents that we had bought for each other and the rest of the occupants of Sarkis and Aprilla's boarding house.

I love to admire all of the different patterns of paper, neatly wrap boxes, and find ribbons and bows to match them. We were all up very late doing so, and it was a good thing too, because around two o'clock, a visitor arrived at the boarding house who is a good friend of Sarkis's--a sailor, named John. He came just in time, because after greeting him, we continued to arrange gifts under the tree and hang stuffed stockings over the fireplace and as soon as all of the stockings were hung, the mantlepiece collapsed. Thankfully, John was present to help Sarkis fix it and rearrange all of the decorations.

Not long after that, the Christmas tree toppled over, making a big crashing sound followed by a lot of jingling.

"Oh, no!" I exclaimed. The bottom of the tree had torn.

"How will we ever get it to stand straight again?" Aprilla asked.

"Stand again? Nonsense," the sailor John answered. "We'll hang it, of course."

"Hang it?"

"Yes, hang it upside down!" he said, then added, "It'll leave more room for the presents," as if this wasn't at all a strange thing to do.

I'd never heard of such a thing, but I couldn't think of a reason why not to try it. That's the way Christmas trees were traditionally positioned, according to John. And we were, in fact, running out of room to arrange the presents.

John and Sarkis retrieved a ladder from the shed and screwed an eye hook into the ceiling and another hook through the trunk of the tree, and hung it from the ceiling by a chain. We had to rearrange some of the ornaments on the tree branches so that they would hang right, but once the tree stopped swaying and we arrayed all of the finely wrapped gifts around the tip of it, the whole arrangement looked pleasantly fitting.

I was the last one awake that night. (I stayed up until three-thirty in the morning and didn't go to sleep until well after four.) There were so many guests in the boarding house that Glorya, one of the imps, had to share the bed I normally shared with Alice, and the sailor John was sleeping on the sofa in the parlour, and by the time everyone was asleep, there was no room in any of the beds for me.

After wrapping the last gift, I turned around to set it in its place under the tip of the Christmas tree and realized there was still more space beneath it. Then looking at its twinkling lights turning red, yellow, green, and blue, I remembered every year as a child, wanting to sleep under the Christmas tree, and my mom and dad never letting me. But there was no one to stop me now.

I slipped into my bedroom where Alice and Glorya were sleeping to steal a blanket and pillow, crept back downstairs, curled up beneath the piny-smelling branches of the Christmas tree, and closed my eyes. Never had I slept more soundly on a night of Christmas Eve.