How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas (37 page)

“We're going to save Christmas, too,” Sara replied.

Clark the Blacksmith

She did not sleep that night. During the hours before dawn, she thought about many things—what if, for instance, the protest failed? It was possible Avery Sabine might be smart enough to order the city gates locked all Christmas Day long, to keep potential protestors out. Or what if not enough people showed up to march? Originally, her parents, Auntie Layla, and Arthur had hoped for a thousand marchers, perhaps two thousand. But if only a hundred or so actually participated, then the march would have no effect other than reassuring Mayor Sabine that few people really cared about saving Christmas after all.

Then Sara shed many tears, not from fear of failure, but because she missed her parents and auntie so much. She was being very brave by overcoming her shyness and stepping in to lead the protest, but she was still a thirteen-year-old girl who loved her family and was afraid for them. What if the marchers frightened the mayor and Trained Band so much that they turned their guns on the four Christmas prisoners?

Gradually, though, Sara calmed herself by realizing she had done all she could to prepare. She could not control the future. It had to be enough, just then, to know that she had tried to do the things she should. After a while, Sara slept, and she dreamed about a stout man with a white beard and warm smile, who patted her arm and told her that her courage was going to help save Christmas. When she woke, she remembered the man in her dream, and somehow this comforted her very much.

Christmas Day of 1647 in England dawned clear and cold. Fluffy white clouds decorated bright blue sky. Sara and John Mason gulped down porridge and hurried to the high hill where the protestors were to gather. As they walked, they talked quietly, mostly wondering how many people would come to join the march.

“Five hundred, at least,” Mason guessed. “All our captains report they have met with enthusiastic response. Five hundred people gathered together on High Street will make for a very impressive demonstration, Sara.”

“Five hundred won't be enough,” she told him. “We must have a thousand or more. Only that kind of multitude will convince Parliament that Christmas can't be taken from us or intimidate Mayor Sabine and the Trained Band so none of us are arrested.”

“Perhaps you shouldn't get your hopes up,” Mason cautioned, and just then they passed a bend in the road and the steep hill with the barn on top sloped up before them. Usually, the barn looked quite striking, standing alone, silhouetted against the sky. But on this Christmas morning, there was a far more remarkable sight.

All up and down the hillside, a massive crowd of men, women, and children were waiting. They were wrapped in cloaks against the cold, and the raggedness of many of those cloaks indicated that the very poorest people of Canterbury and the surrounding area had come to march on behalf of Christmas. Though the morning was frosty and the act they were about to carry out was so risky, there was still about them a sort of excitement, even joy. As Sara and Mason approached, they were greeted with hearty shouts of “Merry Christmas.” For the first time in her life, children her own age swarmed to Sara, greeting her like the special friend she had become to all of them, and this pleased her so much that she smiled despite the nervousness she still felt. And, even as those already there milled about, many more people kept coming to the hill, arriving from every direction.

“How many—” Sara began, awed by the crowd.

“Five, six, even seven thousand,” John Mason gasped. “Who ever would have believed it? The love of Christmas truly runs deep in many hearts.”

He and Sara called over their captains, who in turn gathered about them the people they had recruited for the march, and as they did, even more men, women, and children continued arriving, until finally about an hour before noon Mason estimated ten thousand were ready to march. He told the captains to get everyone's attention. It took several minutes. Someone had written a proclamation stating that the people of England would have Christmas back, even if it meant having the king back, too. He was asking everyone to sign, and the
X
s most of them made—few could actually write their names—took up many pages. Arthur would have forbidden the proclamation, because he wanted to keep the issue of celebrating the holiday separate from the fate of Charles I, but Mason and Sara didn't think of this and let the petition be passed around and signed. Finally, when the crowd was mostly silent, Mason and Sara stood before them. She was quaking inside. It had been one thing to talk in front of a few dozen people. Ten thousand seemed like too many, and for several panic-stricken moments she was sure she couldn't do it. But then she thought of Christmas, and her parents, and about what her Auntie Layla had taught her, and so she spoke. Her voice was still low rather than loud, but in a way that helped quiet the crowd, since they had to stop whispering among themselves to hear her.

“Merry Christmas to you all,” she began, and ten thousand shouts of “Merry Christmas” came in response. “Today, we will march into Canterbury and save Christmas. There's really nothing left to say, except to remind you that we must enter all six gates at once, meet in the High Street market, and carry on from there.”

“And no violence,” John Mason added. “Any blow you strike will hurt Christmas more than it hurts the holiday-haters.”

“Can we hit them back if they strike us first?” inquired a short, feisty man.

“As the Bible instructs us, turn the other cheek,” Mason replied. “Remember this young lady's parents and aunt are Mayor Sabine's prisoners. We must not give him an excuse to do anything awful to them. All ready? Then let's march to Canterbury!”

The throng overflowed the road as they walked swiftly toward the town. Just before they came into sight of its walls, the march captains divided the marchers into six separate units. These half-dozen battalions of more than fifteen hundred each took different routes to Canterbury, arriving at the six town gates at approximately the same time. Sara, John Mason, and the blacksmith named Clark made certain they led the group at the West Gate, since it was their intention to rescue the four “Christmas criminals” from the stocks.

As the town bell tower tolled noon, the marchers surged forward from six different directions. The guards at the gates were simply overwhelmed. Even if they had thought of trying to slam the gates shut, all at once there were so many people surrounding them that they couldn't have done it anyway.

Down into the city swept the six groups of protestors, hustling past the few dozen armed Trained Band soldiers who, at any rate, had no idea of what to do. Coming through the West Gate, Sara and her group saw ahead of them the four sets of stocks, with Mayor Sabine standing in front preparing to address a crowd. They increased their pace, and the pounding of their feet on the street echoed off the buildings and alerted the mayor to their presence. He turned, saw them approaching, turned pale with fear, and dropped his written speech into the dirt. Then, in his heavy, graceless way, he ran for his home, more anxious to save himself from any possible danger than to confront the marchers.

It was only as the mayor turned to flee that first Elizabeth, then the other three of us in the stocks were able to see an apparent multitude of demonstrators spill into High Street, with a very familiar blondehaired, blue-eyed thirteen-year-old girl in the lead. That sight caused her mother to gasp, “Is it really possible?” and then the burly blacksmith was smashing the locks that held us in the stocks, and we were free to throw our arms around Sara and gaze in wonder at all the people who had come to protest on behalf of Christmas.

“Sara is responsible for this,” John Mason shouted to us.

“So many people, Sara,” I cried as I took my turn hugging her.

“Oh, there are many more, Auntie Layla,” she replied, and as we hugged I saw over her shoulder that thousands of men, women, and children were pouring into the High Street marketplace from every direction. “I have to go do some things,” Sara said, causing me to reluctantly let her out of my embrace. “We want our demonstration to be efficient as well as peaceful.”

Her parents and I watched in wonder as this painfully shy child stood in front of ten thousand people and led them in singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” so loudly that the sound must have echoed inside the fine brick home where the mayor of Canterbury was cowering.

“It's a Christmas miracle!” Elizabeth Hayes exclaimed. “Everything is going to be perfect.” But Arthur nudged me with his elbow and pointed. One of the Trained Band had mounted a horse and was galloping away through the West Gate.

“He's off for reinforcements, Layla,” Arthur said. “The protest isn't successful yet.” Everyone else, it seemed, was singing, and I wondered what would happen next.

Gradually, almost mechanically, Alan raised the club while the mayor cringed at his feet. It was one of those terrible moments when everything seems to happen in slow motion.

CHAPTER
Twenty-three

 

 

 

 

F
or about an hour, everything went according to plan. Arthur suggested that we set our own sentries at each of the six city gates, so that reinforcements from the Trained Band couldn't storm in and take us by surprise. This was done—those few dozen Trained Band members already inside the walls of Canterbury were so overwhelmed by the number of demonstrators that they simply leaned on their muskets and watched as we marched and sang. Mayor Sabine, apparently, had no intention of coming back outside his house. Our thousands of protestors were behaving admirably. They sang Christmas carols, marched along all the main streets chanting “God bless Christmas,” and courteously requested those merchants who had their shops open for business to please close their doors in honor of the birth of Jesus.

Most of the shopkeepers were happy to comply. They, too, loved Christmas, and only were working that day because Mayor Sabine had ordered them to do so. Perhaps a dozen others, mostly Puritans whose stores were owned by the mayor, haughtily refused to close. Because the purpose of our march was to support the right of anyone to believe as he or she wished, we took no further action. If they wanted to remain open for business on Christmas Day, this was their privilege—just as it was our privilege to celebrate the holiday we loved so much.

Initially, Arthur, Elizabeth, Alan, and I were kept in the middle of the protestors. Everyone was worried that the mayor and his soldiers would try to recapture us. But it soon became clear that we were in no immediate danger, and, besides, Arthur simply couldn't resist joining Sara and John Mason at the head of the marchers. I found myself there, too, with Alan and Elizabeth not far behind.

It was grand fun to go up and down Canterbury's streets, singing carols and seeing the smiling faces of city residents who suddenly realized that it might be possible to keep the holiday as an important part of their lives. The sun was shining, we were out of the dungeon, and it was Christmas! So an hour flew by, and Arthur whispered to me that it was now time to conclude.

“I'm rather surprised that more of the Trained Band hasn't arrived here already,” he murmured in my ear. “I wonder what is keeping them.” We didn't know until later that our Christmas protest wasn't the only one that day. In towns like Ipswich and Oxford, there were smaller but still effective demonstrations by working-class people who wanted their beloved holiday back. Some Trained Band troops were on their way to those places. In London, the Lord Mayor had another protest to quell. Canterbury's, though, dwarfed all the others, and it obviously was only a matter of time before more soldiers reached the city. Mayor Sabine had hopefully learned a permanent lesson, our protest had been potent but peaceful, and Arthur was right—we needed to go.