How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn Page A

afterward. Many villages would hold dances or put on holiday plays. This may not seem very exciting today, when almost every family has a big meal every night and then settles down to watch television or listen to music or play videogames. But in those times, life for adults and children alike mostly consisted of hard work all day, little to eat, and bedtime when the sun went down, since there were no electric lights and candles cost too much to use very often. Perhaps the date of Christmas was based on old pagan beliefs, but why did that have to matter? What counted was that December 25 had become a time to give joyful thanks for Jesus’ birth, and the opportunity for everyone, rich or poor, to put aside worries and be happy, even for only a day.
    In 1224, one of the people who made these early Christmases so special became the seventh member of our group, and the first new one since Arthur joined us seven centuries earlier. St. Francis of Assisi encouraged poor villagers to create nativity scenes with a manger and animals to remind themselves that Jesus came into the world humble and poor, just as they were. Francis wrote some of the first popular Christmas carols, so common people had special songs to sing and dance to during their holiday celebrations. Francis’s contributions to Christmas traditions made people love December 25 more than ever—and only about two hundred years after he joined us, St. Nicholas finally became part of those traditions, too!

    St. Francis
    Again, this happened to us rather than because of anything deliberate we did. By the late 1300s, it again became obvious that the way we did things had to change. It was getting too hard to craft all the toys we needed by campfire light in locations that changed every few days. In order to have the most toys possible, and the ones that were made best, we needed some permanent place to make them—a factory, perhaps, or even two. While Nicholas, Felix, Francis, and I loved traveling most, searching out children who needed gifts and then delivering them in the middle of the night, Arthur much preferred staying in his beloved Britain, while Attila and Dorothea were happiest in their native country of Germany. So it was decided that Arthur would establish a toy factory in London, while Attila and Dorothea did the same in Nuremberg. Meanwhile, the rest of us would continue traveling and distributing half of the toys made in these factories. The other half would be sold in city markets; Arthur in London and Attila and Dorothea in Nuremberg would use the money to buy materials and pay their employees.
    It all worked very well, though we missed our three longtime friends. But every few months we had to replenish our supplies of toys, and so we would go to London or Nuremberg—both large cities for their time, though dirty and small by today’s standards—and enjoy reunions there.
    I really think it was because of these two toy factories that St. Nicholas and Christmas became linked in the minds of so many people. Arthur, Attila, and Dorothea tried very hard to hire good craftsmen and craftswomen who just wanted to make toys and not gossip about their employers, and mostly they succeeded. One fellow in particular was a very welcome worker who soon was accepted as a full member of our special companions. Willie Skokan was a Bohemian who could take a bit of string, a splinter of wood, and a few drops of paint and combine them into literally any toy he wanted to make. Willie was absolutely marvelous, and we soon couldn’t imagine how we’d ever been able to get along without him. He seldom spoke, and when he did he was careful never to reveal our secrets.
    But that wasn’t true of some others, though I don’t believe anyone deliberately tried to expose us. Some of our workers in Britain or Germany just couldn’t resist whispering things to their families and friends. By the middle 1400s, stories had spread through Europe