Long ago, long before you were born, there was no television to watch, no computer games to play. Electricity hadn’t been invented, so as you can probably guess, there were no electric lights or Cinderella movies.
This was long, long ago before there were stars, except for the Star in the East, which had suddenly appeared when the Christ Child was born and disappeared just as fast. No satellites winked through the night sky. Not even a lone airplane flashed its landing lights because flying hadn’t been invented.
You couldn’t stay up and read. Your mother complained you would ruin your eyes reading in front of the family fire. You couldn’t read under the bedcovers with a flashlight because--you guessed it--flashlights hadn’t been invented, either.
It was a boring time. Every day when the sun went down, all the people of Boringtown went straight to bed and straight to sleep because there wasn’t anything else to do.
Except when there was a full moon.
In those days the moon was far larger than it is today. In fact, when the moon was full, it filled half the sky of Boringtown. When there was a full moon, the people of Boringtown enjoyed winter sleigh rides. The moon shone like silk along the runners of their sleds. When there was a full moon, the people loved to take summer evening walks beside the lakes. The moon shone a path along the water from the heavens to
the shore.
Being the only light in the night sky, the moon grew ever so smug. One might even say he
became absolutely unbearable.
“Look at me!” he screamed at the fish. “Without me, could you swim upstream at night?”
“Look at me!” he taunted the deer. “Without me, you’d never find your way through those thickets!”
“Look at me!” he shouted to the people. “I am Light. What would you be without me? Dark, that’s what! Dark, dark, dark!”
I can tell you, the good folk of Boringtown got pretty tired of the Moon’s know-it-all ways. They sighed, but what could they do?
In Boringtown, there lived a bright young
girl. Alyssa, the daughter of the butcher, was only five, but already she knew how to tie her shoelaces. In those days, people didn’t go to school until they were at least six. Alyssa was too young for school. She played for hours with her sister Brianna behind her father’s butcher shop.
One day, Alyssa’s father was very angry. “Flies, flies everywhere!” he cried. “On my meats, on my sausage! Flies!”
Alyssa thought about it for a minute, then
took a long strip of butcher paper and covered it with honey. Not too neatly, I’m afraid, She was only five.Before long, all the flies were stuck to the honey.
Alyssa’s father was very happy. “That daughter of mine,” he whispered to Mr. Jones and Mrs. Twiddleham. “Such a smart girl.”
One day, Alyssa said, “Father, may I please have some pieces of string and and a big jar of melted wax?”
“Certainly,” said her father. “What are you doing?”
“Inventing, Father.”
“Such a smart girl, my daughter,” Mr. Butcher whispered to old Mrs. Crabby.
That Alyssa, the people of Boringtown laughed, always up to something. Why, perhaps some day....well, you just never knew.
One evening just at sundown, the moon’s light caught Alyssa running home from her friend’s house.
“Aha, Alyssa,” crowed the moon. “You may be known as Alyssa the Smart, but without me, you would have tripped over that tree root.”
“Would not!” said Alyssa.
“Would, too,” said the moon. “And that’s that.”
Alyssa put her hands on her hips and stared at the moon. “Why are you such a big pain?’ she asked, sticking out her tongue. Alyssa’s mother always complained that Alyssa questioned everything. Why is the grass green? Why is the sky blue?
The moon reeled back a few thousand kilometres. He was thunderstruck. “Why, you little nincompoop,” he blustered. “Who do you think you arre? Don’t you know who I am?”
Alyssa wagged a finger at the moon. “Of course I do,” she said. “You are the moon and if I may say so, a very sorry excuse for night light.You don’t shine every night. Even when you do shine, we can’t see all of you every night. Sure, sometimes you’re full. But most nights, you’re just half. Or even quarter. Why, I’m going to invent a better light than you.”
“You dare criticize ME?” snarled the moon. “Why, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll--”
The moon was so mad he couldn’t finish. He laid a finger aside of his Man-in-the-Moon nose and took several deep breaths. “I can’t have humans talking back to me. It Just Won’t Do,” he grumped. “I must teach young Alyssa SmartyPants a lesson. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. What can I do?”
What COULD he do to get even? It would have to be something really really big. He snapped his fingers. “Got it!’ he said. “I’ll eat Christmas. That will show her.”
Now Alyssa, like most young boys and girls, was very fond of Christmas. Every Christmas Eve, she helped her father cut a Christmas tree. She helped her mother and Brianna make the popcorn and cranberry decorations. Remember, there was no electricity, so naturally, no Christmas lights. For years Alyssa had tried to stay awake long enough to see Santa Claus pop out of the kitchen fireplace. Usually, if she stayed up too late, though, she got scared of the dark.This year, she HOPED her new invention would help her stay up late enough to catch Santa. Alyssa was so excited, almost every day she said, clasping her hands together, “Ohhhhh, I can’t wait till Christmas Eve.”
The week before Christmas, the moon was almost full. He peeked in the window as Alyssa’s mother poured brandy on the fruitcake she had made months ago. He watched Brianna and Alyssa string the popcorn and cranberries. He looked in the butcher shop and saw Alyssa’s and
Brianna’s father plucking the turkey.
“I’ll wait until the tree is trimmed,” the moon decided, giggling with nasty glee. “I’ll wait
until the presents are wrapped. Maybe I’ll even wait until Santa Claus fills the stockings.
“Ohhhhhh,” he said, trying to sound like Alyssa, “I can’t wait till Christmas Eve.”
On Christmas Eve, Alyssa, Brianna and their father trudged off into the snowy woods to cut the Christmas tree.
They hauled it home on their sled, dusted off the snow and set up the tree in the living room. It was so tall it almost touched the ceiling.
“Perfect,” said Alyssa, eyeing the tree up and down. “I’ll get the popcorn and cranberries.”
She scampered to the back porch where the decorations were keeping cool, just in time to see Harry the Horse removing his head from the open window. No strings of red rosy cranberries. No strings of white, fluffy popcorn. Only Harry, with a satisfied look on his face and a definite bulge in his stomach.
“What’s wrong, Alyssa?” asked her mother when she returned. “Why, you’re white as the snow outside. Did you see a ghost?”
“No,” said Alyssa miserably. “I saw Harry eating all the Christmas decorations. We don’t have any more popcorn or cranberries. How can we have a Christmas tree without decorations?”
Brianna stared at a gaily wrapped package on the dining room table. “Alyssa, your new inventions!” she said. “Maybe we could use them for decorations.”
“That’s a surprise for Mother and Father,” said Alyssa. “They’re not supposed to open it before Christmas morning.”
“It’s an invention, Alyssa. They’ll be surprised if they open it now.”
Alyssa thought a moment. “Why, you’re right,” she said. “Though I don’t like to say so. Here, Mother. Here, Father.”
Her parents unwrapped dozens of things. They didn’t look like much, just long thin pieces of hardened wax. Each piece had a thick butcher string sticking out of (what looked like) the top. Each piece had a clothespin attached to (what
looked like) the bottom. Alyssa and Brianna had been busy. They had made hundreds of
those wax sticks.
“Thank you so much, Alyssa, dear,” said her mother. “You must have worked very hard making them, but what are these things?”
“I call them candles,” said Alyssa. “You touch fire to the strings. See?” She lit one candle in the fireplace and pinned it to the Christmas tree, then another and another. “They make the nicest light, Mother. Better than the moon, don’t you think?”
That was more than the moon could take. In the flash of an eye, he swept through the kitchen window and gobbled the fruitcake off the counter.
“Ummpppphhh,” he snorted as he quickly chewed the nuts and fruits. “Awful stuff.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the turkey sitting on a block of ice in the kitchen sink. “See? No turkey!” he shouted, gobbling it up raw, stuffing and all.
“See? No chestnuts!” he shouted, gobbling up two huge bowlsful.
He flooded into the living room. The whole family watched, eyes big as frying pans.
“See? No presents!” the moon screamed as he gobbled every box and bag.
“No doll for Brianna!” he shrieked. Gobble gobble. He ate without chewing.
“No teddy bear for Alyssa!” Gobble gobble. He swallowed it whole.
He turned to Alyssa, a big red bow still dangling from his mouth. “See, Miss Smarty-
pants Alyssa?” he sneered. “No Santa stockings!”
He attacked the fireplace. Gobble gobble.
“See?” he screamed, taking a really big breath. “No tree!”
“No, no, not after the brandy in the fruitcake,” said Alyssa, trying to push the moon aside. “The candles will--”
“Out of my way, little girl,” roared the moon.
He opened his mouth and gobbled the Christmas tree. As I said, the tree was very large, so he couldn’t gobble it without chewing. It took a while to finish all the boughs because the candles kept burning his mouth, but soon all that was left of the Christmas tree were a few pine needles on the floor.
The moon was full before, but suddenly, he felt more than full. “Owwww,” he moaned. “I have the worst tummyache.”
He slid out through the window with not a moment to spare because as soon as he was back in the sky, one of the candles lit the fruitcake brandy inside him and the moon exploded.
Oh, I tell you, it was quite a sight. Bits of Christmas tree flew everywhere, which I suppose is why you see pine trees scattered all over the world today. The air was full of the confetti of Christmas paper and bows, not to mention raw turkey and half-chewed chestnuts. When Alyssa let her dog Spot in, she found the toe of her Christmas stocking upside down on Spot’s tail.
Still, it wasn’t such a bad Christmas, when you think about it. Alyssa had invented Christmas lights you could use all year long so people could stay up later though her parents made the girls promise to never ever light the candles by themselves.
Alyssa and Brianna hung up two new stockings. Later that night, Santa Claus came down the chimney and crammed them full of goodies.
The other presents fell back to earth pretty much whole, the way the moon had gobbled them. They had to be wrapped again after Alyssa’s mother had wiped the bits of pine boughs and guck off them. It was a messy job, but no one minded. Alyssa and her father got a
new tree and trimmed it with more candles. The
butcher had sold all the turkeys, but luckily, he
had one goose left. On Christmas morning, he fetched it from the shop and Alyssa’s mother stuffed it with bread and raisins and apricots.
Nobody had really wanted the fruitcake anyway.
Best of all, that evening when the sun stole down behind the faraway hills, the moon--or what was left of him--sidled shamefacedly up the sky. He was just a fraction of his old self, but all around him, lighting up the entire sky, were hundreds and thousands of pieces that had broken off when the moon exploded. Just think, if the moon hadn’t tried to eat Christmas, we might never have had stars. And what would Christmas be without stars?
© 2001 Ev McTaggart
