How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn

broke on the rare occasions that they actually hit the other marbles at which they were aimed. Still, with some practice we were able to craft toys at the same incredible speed with which we’d been able to carve book covers. We took this as a sign that we should keep trying, and finally we made some that we considered good enough to take to Rome, where we offered them for sale at a market. We sold everything, dolls and marbles and hoops, within minutes, and at a good enough profit to buy materials to make hundreds more. We left those as gifts for poor children in Naples to the south of Rome. The next morning we returned to their neighborhood, and how wonderful it was to see boys and girls shouting with sheer joy as they shot their marbles or played with their dolls or rolled hoops across the meadow.
    â€œPerhaps they’re still wearing rags, and too many of them will go to bed hungry tonight,” I said. “But for now, they’re happy, and tomorrow they’ll still have their toys to play with. We must keep on giving gifts of toys.”
    â€œThen we have to keep making them,” Felix observed. “That’s going to be the hardest part. Food and clothing we can buy anywhere and give away the same day. Crafting toys is far more complicated. It will be impossible for us to have some to give away every night, no matter how fast we work.”
    Though we wouldn’t realize it for another three hundred years, the solution to that problem was already in progress. Gradually, people in Britain and Europe were defining specific dates when special gift-giving was most appropriate. Today, many people think that Santa Claus or St. Nicholas or Pere Noel or Father Frost—the name is different in almost every country—simply selected December 6 or 25 or January 6 as the day he brings gifts to children. In fact, those dates were picked for us.
    Forget the word Christmas for just a moment. Though not known by that name, the date of December 25 became especially holy in the Christian church in the early 300s, when it was arbitrarily selected as the day to celebrate the birth of Jesus. That date was borrowed from other, earlier religions. Mithra, the Persian god of light, supposedly had been born on December 25. The Romans traditionally enjoyed a weeklong celebration called Saturnalia from December 17 through 24. They had parties and ate special food and gave each other little gifts. When Christianity became the official religion of Rome in the 300s, people still wanted their holiday. In 350, just seven years after my husband supposedly died in Myra, Pope Julius I used December 25 as Jesus’ birthday on the new Roman calendar. Of course, the holiday was intended from the start as a special time to give thanks to God for sending Jesus, and not everyone carried over the old Saturnalia tradition of giving gifts on that date. But many people did. In some places, grown-ups began giving small presents to children on January 6, called Epiphany, and supposedly the day that the three Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem to give their gifts to Baby Jesus.
    Going to church on December 25 was something most Christians wanted to do; the service held then was known as a mass. Because this particular mass was devoted to Jesus, it was called Christ’s mass. In the year 1038, people in Britain started using the term Christmas, combining the two words. Christians in other countries began doing the same, altering the wonderful new word to fit their own languages. In Holland, for instance, people now looked forward to Kersmis, since the old Dutch word for Christ was Kerstes.
    We were thrilled with the celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany; not only did they celebrate the birth of Jesus, they also gave common people a better chance to forget their troubles for a little while. Their holiday feasts might be the only time all year that there would be a little meat with their vegetables, or sweet candy for the children