A Boy Called Christmas

You are about to read the true story of Father Christmas.

Yes. Father Christmas.

You may wonder how I know the true story of Father Christmas, and I will tell you that you shouldn’t really question such things. Not right at the start of a book. It’s rude, for one thing. All you need to understand is that I do know the story of Father Christmas, or else why would I be writing it?

Maybe you don’t call him Father Christmas.

Maybe you call him something else.

Santa or Saint Nick or Santa Claus or Sinterklaas or Kris Kringle or Pelznickel or Papa Noel or Strange Man with a Big Belly Who Talks to Reindeer and Gives Me Presents. Or maybe you have a name you’ve come up with yourself, just for fun. If you were an elf, though, you would always call him Father Christmas. It was the pixies who started calling him Santa Claus, and spread the word, just to confuse things, in their mischievous way.

But whatever you happen to call him, you know about him, and that’s the main thing.

Can you believe there was a time when no one in the world knew about him? A time when he was just an ordinary boy called Nikolas, living in the middle of nowhere, or the middle of Finland, doing nothing with magic except believing in it? A boy who knew very little about the world except the taste of mushroom soup, the feel of a cold north wind, and the stories he was told. And who only had a doll made out of a turnip to play with.

But life was going to change for Nikolas, in ways he could never have imagined. Things were going to happen to him.

Good things.

Bad things.

But if you are one of those people who believe that some things are impossible, you should put this book down right away. It is most certainly not for you.

Because this book is full of impossible things.

Are you still reading the book?

Good. (Elves would be proud.)

Then let us begin…

Now, Nikolas was a happy boy.

Well, actually, no.

He would have told you he was happy, if you asked him, and he certainly tried to be happy, but sometimes being happy is quite tricky. I suppose what I am saying is that Nikolas was a boy who believed in happiness, the way he believed in elves and trolls and pixies, but he had never actually seen an elf or a troll or a pixie, and he hadn’t really seen proper happiness either. At least, not for a very long time. He didn’t have it that easy.

Take Christmas.

This is the list of every present Nikolas received for Christmas. In his entire life.

A wooden sleigh.

A doll carved out of a turnip.

That’s it.

The truth is that Nikolas’s life was hard. But he made the best of it.

He had no brothers or sisters to play with, and the nearest town—Kristiinankaupunki (kris-tee-nan-cow-PUN-kee)—was a long way away. It took even longer to get to than it did to pronounce. And anyway, there wasn’t much to do in the town except go to church or look in the window of the toy shop.

Papa! Look! A wooden reindeer! gasped Nikolas as he pressed his nose against the glass. Or:

Look! An elf doll!

Or:

Look! A cuddly doll of the king!

And once he even asked:

Can I have one?

He looked up at his father’s face. A long and thin face with thick bushy eyebrows and skin rougher than old shoes in the rain.

Do you know how much it is? said Joel.

No, said Nikolas.

And then his father held up his left hand, fingers stretched. He had only four and a half fingers on his left hand because of an accident with an ax. A horrible accident. Lots of blood. And we probably shouldn’t dwell on it too much, as this is a Christmas story.

Four and a half rubles?

His dad looked cross. No. No. Five. Five rubles. And five rubles for an elf doll is too much money. You could buy a cottage for that.

I thought cottages cost one hundred rubles, Papa?

Don’t try and be clever, Nikolas.

I thought you said I should try and be clever.

Not right now. And anyway, why would you need an elf doll when you have that turnip doll your mother made? Couldn’t you pretend the turnip is an elf ?

Yes, Papa, of course, Nikolas said, because he didn’t want to make his dad upset.

Don’t worry, son. I’ll work so hard that one day I’ll be rich and you can have all the toys you want and we can have a real horse, with our own coach, and ride into town like a king and a prince!

Don’t work too hard, Papa, said Nikolas. You need to play sometimes too. And I am happy with my turnip doll.

But his father had to work hard. Chopping wood all day and every day. He worked from as soon as it was light to when it was dark.

The trouble is, we live in Finland, his father explained, on the day our story starts.

Doesn’t everyone live in Finland? asked Nikolas.

It was morning. They were heading out into the forest, passing the old stone well that they could never look at. Joel had an ax on his back. The blade dazzled in the cold morning sun.

No, said Joel. Some people live in Sweden. And there are about seven people who live in Norway. Maybe even eight. The world is a big place.

So what is the problem with living in Finland, Papa?

Trees.

Trees? I thought you liked trees. That’s why you chop them down.

But there are trees everywhere. So no one pays much for… Joel stopped. Turned around.

What is it, Papa?

I thought I heard something. They saw nothing but birch and pine trees and shrubs of herbs and heather. A tiny red-breasted bird sat on a branch.

Must have been nothing, Joel said, unsure.

Joel stared up at a giant pine, pressed his hand on the rough bark. This is the one. He began chopping, and Nikolas began his search for mushrooms and berries.

Nikolas only had a single mushroom in his basket when he saw an animal up ahead, in the distance. Nikolas loved animals, but mainly saw only birds, mice, and rabbits. Sometimes he would see a moose.

But this was something bigger and stronger.

A bear. A giant brown bear, about three times the size of Nikolas, standing on its hind legs, its huge paws scooping berries into its mouth. Nikolas’s heart started a drumroll of excitement. He decided to get a closer look.

He walked quietly forward. He was quite close now.

I know that bear!

The terrifying moment when he realized he recognized the bear was also the one when he stepped on a twig and it cracked. The bear turned, stared straight at him.

Nikolas felt something grab his arm, hard. He turned to see his father looking crossly down at him.

What are you doing? Joel hissed. You’ll get yourself killed.

His dad’s grip was so tight it hurt. But then he let go.

Be the forest, whispered Joel. This was something he always said whenever danger was around. Nikolas never knew what it meant. He just stayed still. But it was too late.

Nikolas remembered when he was six years old, with his mother—his jolly, singing, rosy-cheeked mother. They had been going to get some water from the well when they’d seen the exact same bear. His mother had told Nikolas to run back to the cottage, and Nikolas had run. She hadn’t.

Nikolas watched his dad hold his ax with a stronger grip, but he saw his dad’s hands tremble. Joel pulled Nikolas back, behind him, in case the bear charged.

Run.

No. I’m staying with you.

It was unclear if the bear was going to chase them. It probably wasn’t. It was probably too old and tired. But it did roar at them.

Then, right at that moment, there was a whistling sound. Nikolas felt something brush against his ear, like a fast feather. A moment later, a gray-feathered arrow was piercing the tree beside the bear’s head. The bear went down on all fours, and sloped away.

Nikolas and Joel looked behind them, trying to see who had fired the arrow, but there was nothing but pine trees.

It must be the hunter, said Joel.

A week before, they had found an injured moose with the same gray-feathered arrow sticking out of it. Nikolas had made his father help the poor creature. He’d watched him gather snow and press it around the wound before pulling the arrow out.

They kept staring through the trees. They heard a twig crack, but still didn’t see anything.

All right, Christmas, let’s go, his dad said.

Nikolas hadn’t been called that for a long time.

Back in the old days, his father used to joke around and have fun. He used to call everyone nicknames. Nikolas’s mother was Sweetbread, even though her real name was Lilja, and Nikolas himself was nicknamed Christmas because he had been born on Christmas Day. His father had even engraved his wooden sleigh with the nickname.

Look at him, Sweetbread, our little boy Christmas.

He was hardly ever called that now.

But don’t ever go spying on bears, okay? You’ll get yourself killed. Stay near me. You’re still clearly a boy.

A little later, after Joel had been chopping for an hour, he sat down on a tree stump.

I could help you, offered Nikolas.

His father held up his left hand. This is what happens when eleven-year-olds use axes.

So Nikolas just kept his eyes to the ground, looking for mushrooms, and wondered if being eleven years old was ever going to be any fun.

The cottage where Nikolas and Joel lived was the second-smallest cottage in the whole of Finland.

It only had one room. So the bedroom was also the kitchen and the living room and the bathroom. Actually, there was no bath. There wasn’t even a toilet. The toilet was just a massive deep hole in the ground outside. The house had two beds, with mattresses stuffed with straw and feathers. The sleigh was always kept outside, but Nikolas kept his turnip doll beside the bed to remind him of his mother.

But Nikolas didn’t mind. It didn’t really matter how small a house was if you had a big imagination. And Nikolas spent his time daydreaming and thinking of magical things like pixies and elves.

So the best part of Nikolas’s day was bedtime, because this was when his father would tell him a story. A little brown mouse, whom Nikolas named Miika, would sneak into the warmth of the cottage and listen too.

Well, Nikolas liked to think that Miika was listening, but really he was just fantasizing about cheese. Which took quite a lot of fantasizing, as Miika was a forest mouse, and there weren’t any cows or goats in this forest,