Stories Told at Christmas

By Tom Finnian O'Cianain

This warm collection of five short stories guarantees a reflective respite for the Christmas Season. Each story savors the role of memories in shaping what Christmas means...meanings that are typically of more human than heavenly causes.

The anthology captures a boy’s recollection of a most magical Christmas (or, was it the toymaker?), the spirited secrets of a Community Christmas Social (the answer to what's in the beans is what's in the biscuits), and three variations on the theme of Christmas thresholds of love and life (in carols, on ice, and at a manger). These are sensuous reads for any adult who has a heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Finnian O'Cianain
• Release date: Nov 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465834485

Tom Finnian O'Cianain

As a counselor and consultant, Tom Finnian O’Cianain (Keenan) has listened, observed and reflected. As a teacher and a philologist, he continues to learn and unlearn the relevance of words. Throughout life, Tom Finnian has been making up stories and making believe. He is a caring husband, father, and grandfather to nurturing human beings, and to projects and posterity. After moving back and forth over the North American continent, Tom Finnian watches, works and writes from a small farm on Vancouver Island, at home with his journey.

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Stories Told at Christmas

by

Tom Finnian O’Cianain

Copyright 2011 Tom Finnian O’Cianain

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Stories Told at Christmas

The Toymaker

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The Weymouth Christmas Social

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If Only in My Dreams

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A Bridge of Winter Ice

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Lying Down with Sheep

The Toymaker

When I was a boy of ten, my parents took in a boarder. It was a sparest time, in between Korea and Rock ‘n Roll. We lived in a large old house and, there being only Mama, Papa, and I in the house, and needing the extra money as we did, we rented a room to Mr. Johannsen. Mr. Johannsen was a toymaker.

I remember a very tall man, with a voice like wind, who kept mostly to himself, rarely saying much. He did occasionally tell me jokes and sometimes posed me riddles. He smiled whenever I saw him.

He had a nice smile. His mouth appeared small, lips quite red, and shiny, like wet fruit. I saw him lick them often as he worked at his bench, or when he seemed to be thinking. Maybe his mouth was not that small. I just remember how it appeared so, sunken between his wild mustache and that long black beard.

His eyes. Though I tried, he never let me look straight into his eyes. I’d guessed he was shy, rather than embarrassed or sinister, for he didn’t gaze directly, or speak much, with Mama nor Papa one or the other. I did get to see his eyes, though, when I would peek through the crack in his door while he sat at his workbench. Sometimes, too, I watched his eyes when he rested in the parlour in the green wingback chair reading the day-old news, or when he stood at the window watching the snow fall. They were genial eyes, night blue, not blue like summer morning sky, nor robin eggs, but deeper blue, like ice under the moon. As I watched his eyes, I always thought he was staring off to some faraway place, or as if at an apparition in a crystal. He had no visitors, to speak of, except for a few times I will speak of shortly. I thought he saw things we couldn’t see.

In his room, Mr. Johannsen had his bed, its head and foot brass and with white enameled spindles. There was a simple chest of drawers, its wood burnished with pipe smoke and age. And his workbench. Though he usually kept his door closed, on occasion I saw into his bedroom when the door was left ajar. The bedclothes were typically rumpled, though I wondered when he slept.

For most of his room, Mr. Johannsen had set up a little shop to design his toys. He told us he didn't actually make any toys there. He told us they were made in China and Mexico, England and other far-away places. Several times each year, Mr. Johannsen would travel to those places around the world, he told us, to arrange for the toys to be made. All of this fascinated me, instilling a sense of much mystery about him. A quiet, bearded man who thought up toys and travelled the world.

All about his room there were toys, parts of dolls and puppets mostly, sitting about on the bench and on the shelves. Miniature shoes and glass eyes. A few marionettes dressed as clowns and Cossacks and cowboys and such hung on pegs along the walls. There were big, rolled newsprint paper drawings, too. There was wooden wagon and a shiny chrome bicycle, a red scooter and a blue sled.

Once, Mr. Johanssen caught me in his room. My parents had told me to keep out. But I was there. The toys were too much to only be squinted at from the doorway. He came in that doorway, and startled me. I dropped the little blue sled.