Some time ago, I posted a partial version of my Christmas tale, The Tinselator, to this site. What follows is the complete story as it appears in my collection, The Woman in Red. My way of wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!

At our house, to add tinsel to a Christmas tree is to tinselate the tree. And from this came the following Christmas fantasy. In answer to the obvious question, yes, of course Santa’s real. Santa Claus is the manifestation of our collective love of children. How much more real does it get?

It was the steady beat that woke her.

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

Kaylee sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. With the night light on her bedside table, she could make out the clock on her wall. Five minutes after twelve. After midnight.
It couldn’t be. Could it? Was Santa Claus in the house?

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

It didn’t sound like any Christmas music she’d heard. But Mommy said there were new Christmas songs every year, so … maybe?

Lifting the covers off, she swung her legs round, stood on the hardwood floor, and put on her slippers. The big toe of her left foot wriggled in the open air. Mommy said that maybe she’d get a new pair for Christmas.

As she glanced at her feet, she noticed that her pyjama bottoms had ridden up her calf. Tugging at them, she was surprised that they wouldn’t go any lower. It was the same with the sleeves of her top—they had ridden a couple of inches up her arms. Was she bigger? Or had the pyjamas shrunk since she went to bed? She heard the sound again, and that drove way any thoughts of growing or shrinking.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

After grabbing Panda, Kaylee stuck her head out in the hallway and listened. There it was again.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

It was coming from the living room, which was to her left. To her right was Mommy’s room. She should wake Mommy up. Yes, that would be the right thing to do. Except that Kaylee was curious. Very curious. She would tiptoe and be very quiet and just have a peek and then come back and wake up Mommy. If anything was wrong.

Dum … dum … dum … dum….

Peering around the corner, she noted that the living room was dimly illuminated by street lamps through the thin curtains. There was the Christmas tree in the corner, sparse of limb and decoration, but Kaylee loved it. Beneath the tree were a few presents in wrapping paper or stuffed into bags and topped with colourful tissue paper. They’d been there for a few days, and Kaylee knew that the wrapping paper was a patchwork of used wrapping from previous years. To her eyes, that simply made them more beautiful.

The empty stockings were lying on the floor against the outer wall. Santa just fills the stockings, Mommy had told her. Kaylee’s friends had told her that Santa wasn’t real, and she believed them. But she hadn’t told Mommy yet.

Something moved from a dark shadow in the corner of the room. A man! A tall man. He was wearing a black leather jacket, dark pants, and boots. His hair kind of stood up on end and, even though it was dark, he was wearing sunglasses. And he had a really, really big gun.

“You’re not Santa,” Kaylee observed as she stepped into the living room.

The big man swung around and fixed his gaze upon her.

“Correct,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your home has been targeted for tinselation,” he monotoned.

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

“What’s that noise?”

“My gun needs to charge,” said the man as if that was an explanation.

There was silence for a moment while the man and child regarded each other.
With a tilt of his head, the man asked, “What is your name?”

“Kaylee.”

“How old are you, Kaylee?”

“Five.”

After another period of silence during which the man cast his eyes about the room, he said, “You are poor, Kaylee.”

This was a sensitive topic. The kids at school teased Kaylee for all she didn’t have compared to them and their rich families.

“No, we’re not!” she said, stamping her foot on the ground to emphasize the point.

“The curtains have been patched by hand seven times. The furniture is scratched and old, probably purchased second-hand. Your slippers barely fit and one of them has a hole at the toe. This room is tidy, but judging by the amount of dust, your mother doesn’t have time for housework. Likely because she has more than one job. She does this to provide you with what she can. Conclusion, she loves you. You defended your mother by denying that you were poor. Conclusion, you love your mother as well.”

The anger Kaylee felt left her, leaving her teary-eyed. “Mommy does have two jobs. She works at Walmart and Loblaws for lots of hours every day. She tries really hard. And she’s good to me when she’s here. She helps with my homework, takes care of me when I’m sick. My mommy is the best mommy there is. Even if we’re poor.”

“Remember: if you are loved, you are rich by every measure that matters. If a child is not loved, even though their family is wealthy, they are the worst kind of poor.”

Her eyes wide, Kaylee said, “You’re very smart.”

“Of course. I am a tinselator.”

Dum … dum … dum … dum …

This time the sound was followed by a soft chime.

“It is time,” said the man, hefting his gun and pointing it at the tree.

In a quivering voice, Kaylee said, “You—you’re going to shoot the Christmas tree?”

With the ghost of a lopsided smile, the man said, “Trust me.”

Kaylee heard a whoosh, as from a strong breeze, and then a ball of silver emerged from the gun. It slowly rose to just above the top of the tree, then fell onto it, breaking into long silver strands that covered the tree from top to bottom.

The tinsel glowed, even in the dim light. Kaylee felt her face glowing as well. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

The man turned and stepped toward the shadows from which he’d emerged. And then he was gone.

Kaylee was soon nestled back in bed with Panda, her eyes wide with wonder. Sleep seemed a long ways away. Still, she eventually found herself starting to doze. But another sound jolted her awake. It was coming from above. Were those … hooves on the rooftop?

With a yawn, Kaylee thought, How’s a girl supposed to get any sleep around here?

Kaylee sat bolt upright in bed. That wasn’t something she would say. Was it? It was darker than it should be. The nightlight had gone out, she realized. Still, there was just enough light to see that she was no longer wearing her Pokémon pyjamas. Now she was clad in plain green top and bottoms. She felt her hair. It was longer, shoulder length. Hadn’t she had a pixie cut when she was up earlier?

Getting out of bed and standing next to the chest of drawers, Kaylee could see over the top, something she couldn’t do earlier.

But wait. She’d been five years old when the tinselator came. Now she was … eleven. That’s right. She must have been dreaming about when he’d come, and had just now been awakened by some other noise.

Of course, she was a lot older now, and didn’t believe that a magical being had come to decorate the tree. Obviously, it was a man, a normal man, some friend of Mom’s who’d played a trick.

After noticing that the sounds on the roof had stopped, Kaylee felt rather than heard something soft and heavy landing on the floor somewhere in the house.

Once again, she peered out the bedroom door, considered waking her mother, and instead crept towards the living room. It hadn’t changed very much since she was five. Her mother had bought some new curtains. Or rather, she’d bought some material and had fashioned curtains from them. They were still thin, though, and she could easily see the contents of the room from the streetlights shining in.

All was as it should be: sofa, chair, coffee table, the TV and the plant stand. It’s just that there was something there that didn’t belong: a man, dressed in red, with snow white hair and beard, and wearing white gloves. Next to him on the floor was an enormous, bulging sack, standing about five feet high, tied-off at the top with rope.

The man was snuffling and scratching his head as he looked at a long piece of paper.

“You’re not Santa Claus,” Kaylee pronounced.

The man started, dropped the paper, and stood up. “I’m not?” he said.

“No. You’re not Santa Claus because there’s no such person.” Kaylee said as she crossed her arms.

The man looked down, scratched his head again, and said, “That’s funny. That’s very funny. Because I’m quite sure that I was Santa Claus when I left the North Pole. Yes, I definitely remember Mrs. Claus fastening the top button of my coat before I left. She said, ‘Now then Santa, you’ll be just fine without me. After all, you’ve been doing this for over 2,000 years.’ So, you see, I must be Santa Claus. The problem is, even though I have been doing this a very long time, things always change. People move around, new children are born, other children grow too old for my toys, it all becomes such a muddle.”

His eyes began to tear up and he withdrew a handkerchief and gave his nose a loud blow.
Finding that she was starting to feel sad for the man, Kaylee spoke in a softer voice. “But how do I know that you’re Santa? You could be anyone in a red suit with a big sack.”

Now the man’s eyes began to twinkle. “Oh, but this isn’t just any old sack. Come here and I’ll give you a peek inside.”

After untying the rope, the man gave the sack a tug with both hands, opening the top to its full width. Then he tilted the sack a bit so that Kaylee, who’d cautiously approached, could peer inside.

The inside of the sack seemed endless, filled with packages wrapped in all patterns and colours of paper, and tied with ribbon. Wide-eyed, Kaylee looked up at the man, who was smiling now, and then back into the depths of the sack. The longer she looked, the deeper it seemed, going far past the living room floor, past the ground underneath the basement, and much further down than that.

Kaylee staggered backward and sat on the chair. She had to swallow before she could speak as her mouth had become very dry. “You—you are Santa Claus.”

“Yes, my dear, I believe that I am. And you are Kaylee, are you not?”

Kaylee nodded, not surprised, after what she’d just seen, that he knew her name. Eyes still wide, she regarded Santa as he sat upon the sofa and picked up the paper he’d dropped, turning it one way, then another, until, with a sigh, he set it on the coffee table.
“It’s no good,” he said, voice heavy with defeat. “Mrs. Claus always does the organizing. She knows which houses to visit in which order and what presents to leave. She even wrote it down for me. But it’s beyond me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Why couldn’t she come with you?” said Kaylee.

“Well, it’s her sister,” said Santa. “She’s the North Star, you know. She’s been feeling a bit dull, and Mrs. Claus has gone to help her to feel brighter.” Santa sighed again.

Curious, Kaylee moved to the sofa and picked up the instructions. They were written upon a sheet of legal-size paper with red ink. But the language wasn’t English. In fact, it wasn’t any language at all as far as Kaylee could tell. It was all symbols: stars, triangles, rectangles with inner circles and stars of various sizes within the circles. To make things worse, the symbols were in motion, slowly navigating across the width and length of the page. Some faded into nothing while others slowly appeared. She had no idea what to make of it.

Except … except that the longer Kaylee looked at the page, the more she got the feeling that the symbols were speaking to her. Singing to her in fact, as she began to hear a soft melody that spoke to her of hope and love and peace.

And now she understood. It all made perfect sense.

“Don’t worry, Santa,” said Kaylee. “I can help you. I understand exactly what you need to do.”
“Do you? Do you really? Oh, Kaylee, that’s wonderful. Why, that’s the best Christmas gift I could have asked for. Would you be able to come with me, do you think, while I do my rounds? You’ll be perfectly safe, and it will take no time at all.”

“No time to visit every house where they celebrate Christmas?” Kaylee couldn’t help the skepticism in her voice.

“Exactly. Because we’ll be out of time, you see. What I mean to say is, we won’t be running out of time, we’ll literally be outside of time so that, on Earth, no time will have passed at all.”
This was almost too much for Kaylee. So much of what she believed about the world had changed in just a few minutes. But what choice was there? If she didn’t help, children all over the world would wake up disappointed. She’d watched a movie with her best friend Sheila where one of the characters said, “There’s no decision to make.” Right now, she realized, there really wasn’t.

“Yes, I’ll come with you. Um … will we be starting off here?”

Santa stood and let out a loud “Ho ho ho! Of course we will. Now tell me, what am I to leave for you this year?”

Picking up the list, Kaylee told him. Then, after Santa had filled her stocking, they and the sack full of gifts were on the roof of her house. Santa introduced her to each of the reindeer. Some licked her hand, others nuzzled their head against her. Finally, after mounting the sleigh, they were on their way. And at each stop, Kaylee told Santa what gifts he was to leave and where the next stop was.

Kaylee didn’t remember coming back home. But she must have done, because the next thing she knew her mother was at the door telling her to “rise and shine.” It was Christmas morning.
That was unusual. Kaylee was always the first one awake on Christmas, and would run into her mother’s bedroom and climb into her bed, poking at her mother until she let Kaylee lead her by the hand to the living room and the Christmas tree.

It almost wasn’t a surprise to see that things had changed again. She was now wearing a red tank top and white bottoms dotted with red hearts. And she was taller yet again. And there were other changes.

But of course. She was eighteen, not eleven. She’d been dreaming, remembering dreams she’d had when she was younger.

After the presents were opened and as they were finishing their breakfast of pancakes and sausages, Kaylee said, “Do you remember when we woke up on Christmas and the tree had been decorated with tinsel?”

“Yes, of course I do,” said her mother. “What a nice surprise that was. You’d brought some tinsel home from school and put it on the tree while I was asleep.”

“Um, no, that’s not what happened. You’d had a boyfriend staying over, right? And he put tinsel on the tree.”

Her mother nearly choked on her pancake. “Not quite, Sweetie. The very first time I had someone stay over was when you were sixteen.”

Kaylee set down her fork. “Are you sure?”

With a smile, her mother said, “Do you think I’d forget something like that? No, Dear, the first time was when you were sixteen.”

“But then … who put tinsel on the tree?”

“It wasn’t you?” said her mother.

“No. He called himself—“ Kaylee cut herself off.

“What was that name you made up?” her mother said. “It was really cute. Oh yes, you called him the Tinselator.”

Kaylee didn’t answer. Instead, she straightened and looked around her. “Do you hear that?” Kaylee said. “That music? I’ve heard it before.”

After a moment of silence her mother shook her head. “No, Dear, I don’t hear a thing.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Kaylee, and set off to follow the sound. It became clearer and more pronounced as she left the kitchen and approached the living room. Turning her head slowly to the left and right, she followed the faint music to the Christmas tree. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a red envelope on the wall-facing side of the tree. The music was louder now. Taking the envelope, she opened it and withdrew a white sheet of paper with red markings.
That’s when she called for her mother with a choked scream.

Her mother arrived in seconds. Kaylee held up the page for her to see. It was a legal-size sheet of paper, with red symbols drawn upon it. Symbols which moved about the page on their own volition.

Her mother’s jaw dropped. “What is this? How are you doing this?”

“It’s not me,” said Kaylee.

They both looked at the paper for a few seconds, until the symbols began to fade. They were replaced with red letters that spelled: “Merry Christmas, Kaylee, from Santa and my dear friend, the Tinselator.” A few seconds later, the letters disappeared, leaving Kaylee with a blank page.

“What does this mean?” her mother whispered.

Kaylee smiled and reached to give her mother a tight embrace. With her head resting on her mother’s shoulder, Kaylee said, “It was real. They’re real. The Tinselator and Santa Claus. I thought they were just dreams. Oh, thank you Santa. Best. Gift. Ever.”