Belsnickel
Mama sat darning and rocking, pretending to expect nothing, but she glanced at us over her glasses when she thought we weren’t looking and she did it much more often than even when we were acting rambunctious. Papa was smoking a pipe in his chair as he did most every winter night by light of the fire after coming in from wood-chopping but his chair was turned toward the door, and he was watching it instead of telling us stories, and his pipe kept going out. The fire was crackling strong but, save the youngest, we were not so gay before it as we had been. Nights past, we told stories of this night to one another and pushed and laughed and fought until Mama calmed us down. Tonight all but one of us was set back to the fire, staring at the door. It was dark out the window, snow was patting against the glass. One of us was crying scared. Everybody was already inside who lived there, but the knob turned anyway, for it was Christmas, and Kris Kringle was coming.
The door swung open and swiftly in stepped a figure in a long, dark coat, snow coating their shoulders and heavy hood. Peering through fur trim was a person with familiar eyes over a fake beard. Mama and Papa didn’t get up to greet the visitor, they just exchanged looks between each other and us. The disguised figure grinned down at us, chuckled and unslung a bag, hanging it open wide for us to see within it. The youngest one peered closer than the rest of us and caught a good look at the delicacies inside, really there, just as we had said they would be, but the rest of us were already watching the other hand, with the switch.
It was long as the longest walking stick, but too skinny to be used for anything other than what it was, a whip, a smart one, and nothing in the room was out of its reach. The visitor pulled back the bag with one hand, spilling a marvelous trove of sparkling candies and toys onto the floor with a maniacal laugh as the other hand began immediately whipping stinging, rapid blows of the switch upon our backs. We scattered to the floor to scoop up our prizes. The adults laughed as we snatched what we could, first laughing then screaming at each new flicking swipe of the switch, collecting treats while pelted by acid rain, and they never laughed harder than whenever two of us reached for the same prize and got the continued, special attention of the switch’s rapid stings as we fought over it. And when finally we retreated from the doorway, arms full, the switching carrying on, and we cried “We got it all! We got it all!,” Papa and Mama laughed and the switch whipped us still and they shouted “You must have been bad boys and girls this year!”
Kringle laughed too, an unfamiliar laugh, another part of the disguise. We were all balled-up and crying, hiding our faces from the flailing hickory tip, cradling our gathered treasures, by the time it was over. We didn’t hear or see the visitor leave. Mama and Papa were helping some of us up and looking at our injuries and telling us “you’re fine,” and soon we were appreciating our fortunes, had forgotten all about the switch, and the mystery of who it was that had done this to us.
