Uncle Murray’s Hayward Holiday Tales Volume One

“Ere it twas yonder immigrants, Black Irisherrs (sic), yearning for that olde island of their forbearers and the olde fraeries and fairies and mayhaps theire olde jiants too theye missed not a little. And so, theye put up in theire trees, candles and boughs, and not a fewe bells as well. And so, in the small village corners of the wilde forests of Hayeward, Ouisconsin, were the firste Christmas trees knowne to have beene gathered round upon that sacred eve of His holiest birthe.”
​–Midwest Historical Surveyors Organization, 1799 (disputed)

“Merry Christmas dear, I love you so
and it’s just me and you
under the mistletoe”
-Great American Song book

​Sweet William was curled up at the feet of his favorite uncle. It had to be said though, Murray was the favorite uncle, by default, as he was, technically speaking, their only uncle. Sweet William watched as his uncle flicked open a silver lighter with one hand and smoothly lit himself a cigarette. The smoke curled around Murray’s round head and seemed to crease the future lines of a face he would wear sometime later in life. Bells chimed on the Christmas tree in the middle of the room and Sweet William smiled knowing it was time for a tale.
​

“William! Move. Over!” shouted his cousin Lindy. She elbowed him in his tummy but not too hard. William was her favorite cousin and she had only wanted a little space for herself–she had not wanted to maim him. Not yet.
​Corrence plopped himself right next to Sweet William and Lindy and crossed his legs matter of fact. Corrence sat erect, diligently watching the smoke from Murray’s cigarette as it caressed his cousins’ faces. He watched in wonder as the light from a dozen candles glanced off of Murray’s silver lighter, a kaleidoscope of shimmering spotlights, some finding his favorite uncle’s iridescent eyes.
​Skippy came in and sat, as did Red Anthony, Paula Poet, Steffy Sargent, Stevie Wyoming, and Sheila Skins. They all gathered round Murray like small apostles, on this, the night of the Savior’s birth.
​As was his custom, Murray pretended not to notice the brood of gangly nieces and nephews sitting in piles and heaps around him. It was an old game they all had played for years now. He, the ever distracted uncle, they the ever persistent nieces and nephews trying to gain his attention that he might favor them with a tale.
​Feigning surprise at the appearance of fifteen or so children of assorted ages before him, Uncle Murray pretended to almost spill his drink, pretended to the point that the liquid in his glass hit just below the rim before gravity called it back to the center–disaster narrowly averted.
​“Ohhhhhh!” the nieces and nephews all crowed dramatically, knowing that Murray’s sister Lois would not like whiskey being spilt on her brand new carpeting.
​Wiping his forehead in mock relief, Murray creased his eyebrows and let his lips pucker out a silent “whew!” The brood laughed and then, Murray did too.
​Murray looked down at the sprawl of children before him. Some were barely able to walk, some were almost ready to drive, and weren’t they all just babies a year or two ago? It seemed that way to Murray, who did and does not mark time the way they or their parents did. Dragging on his cigarette, he asked with utter seriousness, “Is there a reason I’ve been surrounded by gremlins? I’m pretty sure none of you are quite old enough to smoke yet, and I’m sure as heck not giving you any of my drink!” He offered them all his drink.
​The horde squealed.
​“Easy audience, easy audience,” said Murray, looking at the other adults in the room, who were also gathering around now. In the slowness of time which envelops the fortunate performer, Murray observed each of the other adults carefully, precisely, noting the colors of their sweaters, jackets, ties, and dresses, the cut of their hair, the curls, the pomades and the pearl necklaces. The children too, were dressed formally (wherever possible–Sheila Skins being a tough girl to hand a dress on, no matter the holiday). With sashes and small ties, polished shoes and ribbons, they were certainly a handsome bunch, and, snapping the photo in his mind so that he could, at his leisure, always visit this time and place again (no matter the year, no matter the decade) Murray cleared his throat and said, “I don’t suppose any of you would like to hear a story, would you?”
​The voice of the children rang out in a raucous affirmative and Murray looked over at their parents and grandparents and said to the nieces and nephews, deadpan fashion, “Well it doesn’t look like they want me telling you any stories gang…sorry.” He made his eyes into those of a sad puppy, regretful and round and pretended to go back to doting on his drink and cigarette.
​The children screamed and clanged at their parents and grandparents for their approval, not stopping their onslaught of sound until the adults too were begging Murray to proceed.
​Again, Murray feigned sudden shock, sudden awareness of all of these many people all directing their attention at him. Blinking, as was his habit, he let a smile bleed out of his lips and across his smooth face. Rolling his eyes playfully up into his eyebrows, he carefully whispered out, “Okay…okay, I guess I might have a story or two to share.”
​The nieces and the nephews sang out with glee and laughter. Their presents could wait. This was the greatest gift of all.
​“But,” said Murray, his voice deepening, “Turn off those lights, this is a Christmas story best told by candlelight, if told at all.”
SANTA’S SLAY

​“We all know Santa is a merry old soul,” said Murray, the candlelight flickering on the bridge of his eyes and nose and off the tops of the heads of Sweet William, Lindy, Corrence and the rest. “But was he always so merry? Was he always the jolly fellow we know today?”
​“I don’t know,” said Sweet William innocently before being shushed by thirty other voices.
​“Just let him tell the story William,” said Sheila, putting her arm around her little cousin, a finger to her lips.
​And Murray continued:
​​He was not…always so jolly. No, Saint Nick was not always even a saint, for, as we know, very few are born saints. No, Nick was a bit of a rascal as a youngster and a bit of a clown as a young man. He had taken to riding his father’s sleigh over and through the hills when the snow had freshly fallen, had taken to calling on his father’s horses to dash through the snow ever faster, ever harder, ever so ruthlessly! Murray’s face was growing stern, the shadows of the candle lit room growing harsh in their accents, the small light from his cigarette a lighthouse beacon of doom for the words slipping his lips’ gravity.
​Oh, Nick was not so jolly at this time, no, he was not of joy or good tidings and he was not caroling. No, Nick, Nicky was careening, careening almost out of control, saved only by the sheer density of his father’s mighty sleigh and by the massive horses pulling it. I think there were about eight of them.
​“He had eight horses?!” Sweet William asked aloud.
​Murray looked at Sheila and nodded. Sheila Skins dutifully placed her strong forearm over William’s mouth. She nodded back to her uncle, who continued:
​Nick, who liked a good glass of warm brandy or gin before he went out in his father’s sleigh, was getting caught up in the glow of the moon, in the smell of the pines, and in the crispness of the winter night. Feeling the air rush around him as he bade the horses onward faster and faster, Old Nick was shocked to suddenly see a lumberjack, as large as you like, standing right in the path of the sleigh!
​The man who would one day become Old Saint Nick pulled hard on the reins, his muscles becoming one with his father’s horses’ as they all strained to come to a stop lest they plow right into and over and through the lumberjack!
​The nieces and nephews let their mouths fall open, “oohs” and “ahhs” echoed through the room, repeating off of whirls of cigarette smoke.
​Murray said with deliberation:
​And as the mighty sleigh and the mighty horses came to a stop, the snow gushing before hooves and blades, the lumberjack…laughed.
​“So ye think ye be fast their sonny!” sneered the lumberjack.
​“Fast enough I imagine!” yelled back Nick, who was not a little flabbergasted by this unplanned interruption of his ride.
​“Well then boy, what say you to a race!” the lumberjack roared.
​“What on earth on you going to race me with?” asked Nicholas.
​“With this. And with these,” said the lumberjack, who pulled back the branch of a massive fir to reveal his own sleigh, a sleigh pulled by the most magnificent beasts Nicholas had ever seen.
​“Reindeer!” the nieces and nephews all cried.
​Nodding, Murray continued:
​Yes, the lumberjack, in his great red coat, lined with the pearl white fur of arctic rabbits (matching his great white beard) was the owner of an incredible sleigh, a sleigh so immense it could only by pulled by the mightiest and heartiest herd beasts of all–reindeer!
​Nicholas, young and foolish, and completely unintimidated by this strange man and his strange beasts, cried, “If it’s a race you desire stranger, than a race you shall have! But what are the stakes?”
​Grinning a wicked grin, the lumberjack, his head under a red cap complete with white puff of hare fur on top, said, “Why, we race for the very sleighs we ride and for the very beasts which pull them!”
​Now, at the stating of this wager, Nick faltered. For these were not his horses, for this was not his sleigh. And he feared greatly his father’s retribution should he lose them all for sport.
​The lumberjack spit at the snow covered ground, a great insult in that time and place just as it is now, and said, “I see ye are not quite as fast in the here and now as ye are in your heart and head!”
​“Now look here fellow, whoever you may be, it is not you or your strange beasts which I fear. Nor is it a doubting of my own ability,” said Nick, riled with wounded pride.
​“Then it be doubt in your sleigh and doubt in your steeds,” taunted the lumberjack, his white beard shaking with cruel jest.
​“If they were mine to have faith in, or doubt, it would be one thing,” explained young Nick, “But neither the horses nor the sleigh are mine with which to wager–rather they are my father’s and I’ll not risk the loss of them and the gaining of his wrath should you somehow manage to beat me.”
​“Well then my lad, we shall just have to set the race up in such a manner so as ye shall be confident of your victory!” boomed the lumberjack, his eyes narrowing in a sly manner.
​“Go on strange fellow,” bade Nicholas, “Tell me these terms you obviously have a mind to state”
​Knowing he had Nick hooked now, the lumberjack explained carefully that the two of them would race around the grove of fir trees three times and whomsoever should circle the grove three times first would claim the loser’s sleigh and animals but he, the lumberjack, would allow Nick to complete one full lap before even starting his own first one. He said this all plainly, as if presenting Nicholas with the tastiest apple this side of Eden.
​Nicholas sensed something amiss but still could not resist such a tempting set of circumstances for a race. Not only would he teach this foul lumberjack, whose belly lurched against his red coat and whose beard curled almost to that belly, a fine lesson, he would also bring home to his father, as a winter’s gift, a whole other sleigh and one pulled by the most fantastic creatures he’d ever seen!
​“It is a deal then braggart,” said Nick.
​The two men wheeled their bladed sleighs around and paired them together. The horses and the reindeer regarded each other warily, unfamiliar with the look of each other. The moon froze the snow with her holy light and the green of the evergreens stuck plainly against the star dotted northern night sky. Each man raised his arms up, hands clutching reins, and with a simultaneous count to three, shouted “Go!”
​And Nick and his father’s horses, his father’s sleigh, took off.
As his ride slid through and over the snow, the fir trees branches whipping by, young Nick turned his head behind to see that the lumberjack was being true to his word and waiting.
​He was.
​Nick prodded and provoked his team on and on, gaining more and more speed. He skillfully drove them around the grove of trees, sliding across the top of the snow lanes at incredible speed. Nick wanted the sleigh moving at an impossible rate when they came upon the lumberjack and his team waiting at the race’s starting point.
​Nick could not be sure just how fast he and his team were traveling when he made the final turn of his first lap but he knew he had never gone so fast before. True to his word, the lumberjack and his strange beasts were at a standstill at the start, waiting. Nick could see the reindeer were looking a little frenzied, a little fierce, a little…something. He couldn’t be sure what the look was, but he didn’t like it. Still, they were at a dead stop, and his team was cruising! And they would have one complete lap advantage over the fool–there was no way he could lose!
​As Nick and his sleigh came barreling up to the lumberjack, Nick could see that the man was as calm as could be, only readying his hands to snap the reins at just the right moment. And just as Nick came even with him, he did.
​By the time he heard the crack of the man’s reins, Nick was already forty yards past him! Nick’s team was gliding, streaming along the frozen snow path, kissing the curves and gracefully ribboning the grove. Nick was now one full lap and one hundred yards ahead of the idiot lumberjack.
​But not for long.
​For even as Nick’s team glided and streamed, the lumberjack’s team of reindeer was running so unbelievably fast that to the naked eye they appeared to be…flying. And so it was, with a jingle of the bells on the reindeer bridles, the lumberjack’s sleigh flew past Nick’s. The reindeer and the lumberjack passed Nick so amazingly fast that, in a mere moment, they had disappeared around the bend!
​And along with the jingle, Nick heard the lumberjack’s laughter.
​Nick urged his team on, he cursed and shook the reins, he kissed the curves of the grove even tighter. But as Nick came upon the starting point, completing his second of three laps, he could hear the reindeer bells jingling.
​They were already coming up behind him.
​Impossible! It was all impossible–and yet, there they were, the lumberjack, his sleigh, his reindeer army, flying right behind and then past Nick and his father’s horses before disappearing around the bend once again.
​With a boulder of a pit in his stomach, Nick now knew he would not win. He knew that, by the time his team completed their third lap, the cruel lumberjack and his snarling reindeer would already be resting in their victory.
​By the time his team completed their third lap…the terms came to Nick now a bit differently, and while he knew he couldn’t win the race, he thought he might prolong it enough to alter the final outcome.
…

​Quite some time later, Nick walked around the final bend. While Nick had been able to circumnavigate the grove in under five minutes in his horse drawn sleigh–walking it himself had taken a good twenty minutes. And, it must be said, Nick had not walked with much expedience.
​Impatient to claim his winnings, eager to collect Nick’s sleigh and horses, the lumberjack was bellowing at the finish line. “Where in the name of the Lord is your sleigh? Where are your horses?”
​“Oh, they’re coming,” said Nick out of hand. “I’m sure they’ll make their way to the finish eventually sir. And when they do, I shall be certain to re-harness them to go fetch my father’s sleigh.”
​“You unhooked them from the sleigh!” yelled the lumberjack.
​“Oh yes, sir, yes I did. You see, after you overlapped me in mere moments, I realized I would lose. Yes, I realized I would lose just as soon as my sleigh and my horse completed their third lap. But only then–when they completed three laps. And not before.” Nick beamed at his own cleverness.
​The lumberjack did not.
​“Ye be a little weasel is all. I’ll not be losing a bet due to a play on words bratty boy!” cried the lumberjack, all malice. His red coat shook with cruel joviality, his white beard glistened.
​“Well,” Nick said evenly, “Those were the terms, and I will certainly abide by them, but, I can tell you, it will be quite some time before my father’s horses complete that third lap and so, since we have that time, why not indulge me with the secret to your teams’ speed?”
​The lumberjack laughed heartily at this, knowing young Nicholas thought yet to claim victory due to some kind of admitted cheating. ​But there had been no cheating, only some cleverness on his own part, and so the lumberjack revealed all to Nick.
​“Ye see my boy, these reindeer be especially smart, specially trained, and so, having seen ye cruising though this grove repeatedly, and desiring yer steeds and sleigh (be they yours’ or ye father’s), I promised them a feast, a feast unlike any they had ever eaten–only provided they beat yer team of horses.”
​“And merely promising them a feast enabled your team to so outrun my own?” asked Nick, knowing there had to be more to it.
​“Dear boy, I explained to these beasts of burden that should they win I would provide the finest grains, the finest wines, the finest carrots–any and all they should desire! I promised them again and again until you could see the mad look of food lust in their very eyes!” said the lumberjack, wheezing at his own tale.
​“And merely telling them of a feast enabled them to so outrun my own? asked Nick, knowing there had to be more to it.
​“And then,” said the lumberjack with cruel casualness, “And then, after I had wet their appetite to a fevered pitch…I starved them.”
​“You starved them?”
​“Yes, I starved them.”
​“So,” said Nicholas remorsefully, “That look in the eyes of your poor reindeer, that wild look. It was not the look of fierceness nor the look of utter competitiveness. It was the look of…hunger?” Having said this, Nick approached the team of reindeer (who still had yet to eat). He approached them and pet each beast gently on great backs and proud snouts, looking into their sad eyes, feeling great sorrow for them and their plight.
​“Indeed,” said the lumberjack. “Now enough with all of this–go fetch yer team and yer sled so that I might claim them as my own.”
​“Oh sir!” cried Nicholas, his hands still comforting the hunger filled beasts. “Oh sir! This I shall do–but pray you sir–please, your mighty animals have won the day, please, do not delay further their feast–or even a little bark or grass foraging for them–look at the sad and ugly hunger in their loyal eyes!”
​Spitting on the ground, which was and still is a great insult, the lumberjack’s teeth then chattered in anger, “Ye will not be telling me when and how to feed me own stupid beasts idiot! My beasts shall eat when I decree they eat and not one second, hour, or day before!”
​“Oh kind sir, please allow me then to at least free your team from their bridles so that they may more easily rest,” said Nick.
​“As ye like pathetic lad. But then off with ye to fetch my new horses and sleigh,” answered the lumberjack.
​“Of course good sir,” said Nicholas, who gingerly, lovingly, unhooked the lumberjack’s team of starving reindeer from their cruel harnesses and bridles, stroking them each, and whispering words soothingly in their velvet ears.
​Slowly them, the freed reindeer loped towards the lumberjack who had become distracted by his own hunger and snacked on a giant bag of…carrots. Step by step, the mad, crazed beasts, came closer to their cruel master, watching him eat their carrots, watched as he, who had done nothing to earn the victory save starve them, fattened himself even more, over and over again with delicious carrots.
​Their carrots.
​The lumberjack looked down, surprised to see a great antler pushing him towards the fir trees.
​And then another rack.
​And then another.
​The lumberjack felt his body pushed harder and more tightly against the trees, racks twisting and forking one into the other just as tightly as you like, giving him no quarter, and slowly, ever so slowly…puncturing him.
​Fluids flowed out of the fat lumberjack’s tummy now, fluids which tasted like…carrots. Screams came now, the winner’s.
​Soon, one reindeer was lapping at the lumberjack’s wounds, and then another. Then didn’t one nibble at the lumberjack, and then another.
​And then they were tearing at him.
​And then they were eating him, finding him pleasingly seasoned with carrot.
​In the end, there wasn’t much left of the lumberjack. Just his red jacket, his cap…quite a bit of his white beard. With the approval of the reindeer, Nick took them all as his own, reasoning that the lumberjack, no longer being present to claim victory, had therefore forfeited the race. No fool, Nick did not try to claim the reindeer, knowing full well that once one goes lumberjack, one cannot go back. But, from time to time (about once a year) Nicholas would don the lumberjack’s great red coat with the white rabbit fur lining, pull on his red cap with the white puff, and then call out to the reindeer who now lived in his father’s grove. He would call to them and they would come and they would, all of them together, sleigh through the snow, laughing all the way.
​And, for at least two weeks before their reunion, Nick would not touch a single carrot–just to be on the safe side.
…
​
​“You have got to be kidding me.”
​“I’m not kidding in the slightest Lois,” said Murray.
​“You just told your nieces and nephews a Christmas story involving man-eating reindeer?” asked Lois, who was, as usual, half in the bag.
​Murray looked at his nieces and nephews who were busy acting out their favorite parts of the story with one another, some of them acting as reindeer, some of them acting as the lumberjack or Nick, and still others acting as…carrots.
​“They seemed to like it,” said Murray, shrugging.
​“Bah, humbug,” said Lois. “Bah, Humbug.”

NEXT: The Humbug