Happy Christmas Eve!

Happy Christmas Eve!

"Aren't we grand tonight?" she laughed. "We might be expecting company, so fine we are. When I was little, it was Santa Claus himself who came round on this night, and weren't we excited! I do love Christmas Eve."...

"It's lovely, Mary. You've made it grand. I've never seen it so nice before. You can make a feast when there's an empty pantry. You make everything pretty you handle."

She leaped to her feet with joy at his words, and danced round the room, putting the final touches to the holly and ivy that decked the walls. Along the edge of the stone mantelpiece hung a chain of scarlet berries which she had threaded that afternoon, and in each brass pitcher and pan she stuck a spray of greenery. 

There were not many pictures in the little room -- a wool-work embroidered picture of Christ blessing the children, a cross-stitch sampler, and a painting of a cart-horse. Round the frames she had twisted garlands of holly and sprays of ivy, and sprigs of berries decked the looking-glass and the dresser.

From the middle of the ceiling hung the Kissing-bunch. It was a large bunch of holly with the choicest berries, all trimmed neatly in to a round smooth ball of greenery. It was suspended by a string from a hook, and underneath it a visitor must take a kiss. Such was the custom of those times, when Christmas trees were hardly known.

"It's as lovely a Kissing-bunch as ever I remember," said Simon, gazing up at it. The ball glittered in the firelight. The rosy apples and yellow oranges hanging in the bunch gleamed, and the silver bells, gilded walnuts and little flags of paper stuck in the Kissing-bunch made a brightness that seemed to shine out like a lamp.

Simon rose to his full height and drawing his little wife close to him he kissed her under the prickly bunch. "Thank you for making so many pleasures out of nothing,"said he. 

~from Christmas Stories by Alison Uttley