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“I have heard of Christmas trees in Charlottetown society, but I don’t believe anyone has had a Christmas tree before in Avonlea,” Mrs. Rachel Lynde pronounced as she poured cups of tea for herself and her guest, Miss Marilla Cuthbert.
Marilla had called at Mrs. Lynde’s house one early December Saturday, and had stayed for tea. They were discussing her ward Anne’s latest plans for the Avonlea school Christmas concert that year. Anne, who was the schoolmistress of said school, dearly wanted to continue the previous teacher’s tradition; she also had wanted to expand on it in her first year of teaching.
“Let us be the first, Marilla!” Anne had said to Marilla, when she had discussed it with her at Green Gables earlier that morning. “The tree will be the centrepiece of our concert this year.”
Privately, Marilla thought that a Christmas tree was the height of extravagance for staid Avonlea, and she dared to think Mrs. Lynde would concur. But Anne was the schoolmistress, and if she wanted to bring a Christmas tree to Avonlea for the school concert, Marilla had no say in the matter.
Marilla was not wrong about Mrs. Lynde’s judgment. “Such decadence,” the good lady continued, “well suited to city folk, but Avonlea is a country village with country values. Dear me, where does Anne get these notions?”
“A friend at Queen’s sent her a periodical,” Marilla said. “You know as well as anyone, Rachel, when Anne has her heart set on a flight of fancy, she is not one to be swayed by practicalities.”
Mrs. Lynde also well knew that that was precisely what endeared Anne to steadfast, plain-spoken Marilla, and she knew Marilla was curious as to where this all would end up. Admittedly, so was Mrs. Lynde. “Well, we shall see where this will lead, then, won’t we?” Mrs. Lynde said. “If anyone can make such an endeavour successful, it will be our Anne, one way or another.”
~~~~~
The month of December proved to be the busiest month in Anne Shirley’s life yet. After her decision to “bring a Christmas tree to Avonlea,” she found herself spending every spare moment she had, between her regular school duties, preparing her pupils for the concert, and her home duties helping Marilla and caring for her new adopted siblings Davy and Dora, reading up on every paper she could find about tree care and decorating.
But Anne knew that she would need a good deal of assistance to make her Christmas tree dream come to life, even outside the school, so she enlisted her dearest friends. Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, Fred Wright, and Gilbert Blythe all agreed to assist in any way possible, under the aegis of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society.
In the fortnight before Christmas, Anne, Diana, and Jane spent many a happy hour of the evenings at Green Gables making homely decorations: apples pierced with cloves to make spicy-scented pomanders; panfuls of popped corn to string with cranberries for garland and, when mixed with melted sugar, to form popcorn balls; walnuts and pine-cones wrapped with spare ribbons for hanging from the branches. On one memorable evening, the girls took scissors to paper and cut out delicate snowflakes, which would also be hung on the windows of the hall. In class, Anne taught her pupils to do the same, much to the puzzled reactions of some Avonlea parents. Some elders, Mrs. Lynde among them, were not keen to approve; the whole enterprise seemed terribly indulgent, even though it would be in conjunction with the concert.
Anne decided to set up the tree the day before Christmas. Said day dawned bright and crisp; a generous measure of pure December snow had dusted the ground the evening before and frosted every surface. Gilbert and Fred procured a long winter sled to ferry the chosen tree to the village hall. The group met at the gate to Green Gables, and ploughed down the road, through the fluffy winter blanket towards the Haunted Wood.
“Oh, Diana, won’t it be divine?” Anne enthused. Their gloved hands were buried deep inside rabbit fur muffs against the cold, their cheeks rosy and tingling with exertion and the sharp kiss of mid-December snowflakes that wafted down from the tree branches and swirled in the brisk late afternoon air.
At the Haunted Wood, the group wandered around the trees until they came across a young pine close to the edge of a clearing, about eight feet in height, with a full spread of healthy, needled branches from top to bottom.
“How lovely! This one, I think?” Diana said.
Anne and Diana rounded the tree to inspect it. They saw no missing or broken branches, no bare or brown spots anywhere on its circumference. It was, Anne thought in a word, perfect.
“Yes, absolutely,” Anne agreed.
Jane and the boys also gave their hearty endorsement, so Gilbert and Fred took turns with the axe, each chopping low on the trunk methodically until the tree toppled over and landed with a gentle thud in the snow. Then the boys lifted the tree onto the sled and Fred lashed it with strong rope. All six took their turns pulling it through the fine white snow blanket to the hall. The girls floundered gaily, their skirts trailing through the cold powder.
Once at the hall, they unfastened the tree from the sled and Gilbert and Fred manoeuvred it inside. They set it up at the front of the hall, on the side opposite the stove. Diana had retrieved one of her mother’s large wash buckets for a stand; the group lifted the pine tree into the bucket,and braced it upright. Jane filled the bucket with water and snow. The tree’s heavy fragrance infused the room.
“Oh, doesn’t it smell delicious?” Jane said.
“It smells like the entire forest in here,” Anne agreed.
“Can you imagine? The tree, and the decorations, Anne?” Diana said.
“I don’t think I shall even mind the colour of the hall this year,” Jane piped up, “once we decorate the tree, and the hall, and the windows.”
The next hour or so was spent in a lovely haze of hanging their amassed collection of handmade ornaments on the tree. Anne wisely vetoed the idea of putting candles on for lights, as she was afraid the tree and the hall might burn down. The horrid blue colour of the building had been scandal enough for one year and she did not want to add another black mark against A.V.I.S.
While hanging the cranberry-and-popcorn garlands, Anne was standing on tip-toe, looping the string over the back, when she saw one branch dip downwards, as if a weight had moved across it. She blinked, but the movement disappeared and the branch raised back into place. It had been so fleeting she decided she only had imagined it, and thought no more of it.
When they were finished, the group stepped back to admire their handiwork.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Diana whispered. And it was: the red cranberries and ribbon, along with the white popcorn and scattered paper snowflakes, stood out against the deep green of the pine boughs.
Anne’s eyes glowed with wonder and accomplishment; the tree in its finery looked exactly as she had imagined it, even better than in the illustrations she’d used for inspiration. “I cannot wait to unveil the tree at the concert,” Anne said. “I don’t even know if I will be able to sleep tonight.”
After that they doused the lamps and exited the hall; Anne closed and locked the door of the hall behind her, and pocketed the key, and the group separated, agreeing to meet at the hall the same time tomorrow.
The next day was Christmas Day, and the day of the school concert. Anne was both excited and terribly nervous: this was the first year she, Anne Shirley, schoolmistress of the Avonlea school, had put together such an undertaking. She had no doubt her pupils were ready and more than up to the evening’s festivities, but Anne’s heart was set on it being perfect. She had heard on good word – Mrs. Lynde’s, no less – that the whole village planned to attend the concert, if only to witness the first Christmas tree in Avonlea for themselves. And indeed, at Christmas morning services at the church, many members of the congregation, who did not have a child attending school, addressed that very fact with her.
With Avonlea expectations running so high, and Anne’s own nerves, she could barely eat her Christmas dinner. Later that afternoon, while Anne was dressing up for the evening, she felt a small surge of melancholy amidst the excitement. For this was her first Christmas without Matthew: silent, solid Matthew, the first kindred spirit she’d met in Avonlea, who had convinced Marilla to let her stay at Green Gables. Matthew had given her everything, and she had been so busy the past few weeks she hadn’t had a chance to remember him. She donned her old brown gloria gown in his honour and whispered a swift entreaty for his forgiveness.
Just after the sun had set, Anne, Marilla, Davy, and Dora walked down from Green Gables to the hall, where they met up with Gilbert, Fred, Diana, and Jane, who were already waiting at the door for them. Anne unlocked and opened the door, and the group stepped inside – only to stop short at the spectacle before them.
Anne, especially, stared horrified, for a sorry spectacle it was. The pine tree itself was still standing, propped in its bucket. Some of the drier needles had dropped, as might have been expected. But the decorations appeared as if they had been shorn off the tree and scattered at will. Popped corn remnants and nut shells lay scattered round the plank floor. Several of the apple pomanders had tumbled from their branches onto the floor, half-crushed on the side where they landed, and oozing sweet, sticky juice onto the boards. More detritus floated in the water in the stand, including several of the dainty paper snowflakes. Anne’s eyes brimmed with hot, furious tears.
“What happened, Anne?” Dora looked up at Anne, her fat little cheeks trailing with even plumper tears. “What happened to the tree?”
“Yeah, what happened to the tree?” Davy’s lower lip pouted with disappointment. “It was s’posed to be beeyoutiful.”
“Whatever shall we do?” Diana whispered, her voice quivering.
“Oh, Anne! Even if we can clean it up quickly, it’ll take hours to re-make all the decorations,” Jane lamented, thinking of the evenings the three of them had spent at Green Gables. “The whole village will be here before we could hope to finish.”
By the side wall, there was a flurry of activity next to the tree, and – something skittered across the wood planks of the floor.
“What in Heaven is that?” Diana shrieked. “A RAT?”
“Rats don’t got floofy tails,” Davy said.
Davy was quite the observant little boy, for it wasn’t a rat at all: rather, it was a little red squirrel, its body about the size of a grown man’s hand, and its tail just as big. It scampered up to the windowsill, where it chattered gaily at the group from its perch. The group stared at it, and it stared right back, its beady black eyes accusing.
“How could one little creature cause so much disaster?” Gilbert asked in wonder.
“More importantly, how could have it gotten into the hall?” Marilla asked. Despite the colour of the exterior paint, the building itself was in very good repair.
“It must have been caught in the tree,” Diana mused, “and then it must have hid in the branches when we chopped the tree down, but it didn’t have a chance to run away because it was too frightened.”
“Like a stowaway on a pine-scented boat, sailing an ocean of snow to a new land.” Anne smiled through her tears at that, taken with the image.
“I wonder why we never saw it,” Gilbert said. “Surely we would have noticed it inside the hall at some point yesterday—”
Anne’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no!” she said, suddenly remembering. “That’s what I must have seen last evening.” The group turned as one towards her, and she elaborated, increasingly miserably, “I thought I saw a movement from the tree to the floor while we were hanging the garland. But it was so quick, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I’d only imagined it.” Her eyes filled afresh.
“So it hid inside and had a merry feast after we left,” Jane said, glancing back at the tree.
“Oh Anne dear, please don’t blame yourself, this isn’t your fault at all!” Diana implored her, and embraced her.
“At least it didn’t knock down the tree itself,” Gilbert said, “or we’d have a bigger mess on our hands to deal with.”
“Well, we’ll just have to catch it and set it free outside,” Fred said.
Marilla surveyed the chaos in front of her, with hands on hips. Outwardly she appeared unruffled, though inwardly she felt a keen sense of disappointment on Anne’s behalf.
“Well, let us see what we can rescue from the tree,” Marilla said, ever pragmatic. “Come, girls. Many hands make light work.”
After surveying the damage done, Dora, Jane, and Marilla picked up the ruined pomanders and other ornaments, and delivered them to a long table, where Diana and Anne sorted through the remaining salvageable decorations. They then swept up the debris of nutshells, pine needles, and popcorn, skimmed the detritus from the water in the stand, and fed it all into the stove. In the meantime, Gilbert, Fred and Davy endeavoured to trap the little visitor.
“It appears we’ve lost a good half of our ornaments,” Anne sighed at last, studying the small and rather forlorn collection on the table. Most of the paper snowflakes that hadn’t fallen into the water were still intact, but the cranberry-and-popcorn garlands did not survive; only a half-dozen of the pomanders were still presentable, and most of the popcorn balls had been nibbled or otherwise crushed. The squirrel had been a very busy creature in the night.
Diana patted Anne’s shoulder sympathetically. “We could try spreading them out as far as possible on the tree,” Diana suggested.
“I daresay no one will notice the back of the tree against the wall,” Marilla added, meaning to sound helpful and comforting, but poor Anne’s eyes filled to the brim again.
“Oh, Marilla!” Anne said, trying very hard to control the quiver in her voice. It would be several more hours, after the concert, before she would be able to weep her disappointment and frustration into her pillow, back in her room at Green Gables.
“We must make do with what we have, Anne,” said Marilla. “Now I suppose I could run back home and check to see what I can spare from the pantry, but it won’t be much, things have to last to spring...”
Anne stared at Marilla, a germ of a thought forming in her mind. “Perhaps...” Anne said, trailing off, remembering the comment Marilla made when they first began to clean up the debris. Many hands...
“Perhaps what, Anne darling?” Diana enccouraged.
“Of course! Oh Marilla, you are amazing! Everyone, what if we asked each family in Avonlea to provide one item, just one small item to hang on the tree, whatever they can spare? Plus the apples and nuts and strings and other decorations that haven’t been eaten or ruined? We could still have the prettiest tree in the world. And the tree will belong to everybody in the village.”
Seven pairs of eyes lit with renewed hope. Gilbert checked his pocket watch. “We still have a couple of hours,” Gilbert said, “before everyone else arrives for the concert.”
“Do you think that will be enough time to reach everyone in the village?” Diana queried.
“We will if we split up,” Jane said stoutly. “Diana, you and Fred and myself should suffice.”
Hence Jane, Diana, and Fred flew out of the hall, each to canvass as many of the villagers as possible before the concert. Gilbert and Davy continued to chase down their little visitor in the meantime, while Marilla and Anne, with Dora’s help, cleaned and straightened the tree and replaced the surviving ornaments. Anne was still bitterly disappointed, though, when she saw how meagre the decorations were after the catastrophe. She hoped and silently prayed with all her heart that the villagers would understand their predicament and loan something, no matter how small.
Catching the squirrel proved a merry chase, which cheered Davy immensely. The boys finally managed to corner it in a corner by the stove. Davy crept on hands and knees towards it, while Gilbert crouched beside him, his woollen cap fully stretched out and at the ready to capture the creature.
“Come here, skirrel,” Davy wheedled. “We won’t hurt ya, I promise.” He held out a couple of pine nuts rescued from the floor. “See? I got some food for you.”
The squirrel warily approached the small boy’s outstretched hand, until it was close enough to swipe the proffered food. At that point, Gilbert swooped in and encased the squirrel deftly in his cap.
“Got it!” Gilbert exclaimed.
“We got it, Anne!” Davy shouted.
Gilbert and Davy rose to their feet and stood in front of the stove with the widest of grins on their faces while Gilbert’s woollen cap wriggled fiercely.
“Well, don’t just stand there, get it outside and quickly!” Marilla admonished.
Anne reached for her woollen cape, then flew to the door and opened it, to find Reverend and Mrs. Allan, with raised hands to knock and identical expressions of surprise on their faces.
“Oh!” Mrs. Allan exclaimed.
“Scuse us!” Davy chirped.
“Sorry, Reverend!” Gilbert said.
“We’ll be right back!” Anne added, and the three of them sprinted out the door, leaving behind a rather dumbfounded Marilla to explain the predicament to the Allans. They paused, however, once they were a few feet away from the building.
“Where are we taking it?” asked Davy.
“We should take it back to the grove where we found the tree,” Gilbert replied.
“But why, Anne?” Davy continued.
“Because the grove is where its home and food will be,” Anne said, “where it will be safest, and we shouldn’t keep it from its family. Now Davy, dear, you must go back inside the hall with Marilla.”
The young lad’s lower lip curled in disappointment. “I wanna come! I wanna come see where the skirrel lives!”
“I know, Davy, but it’s rather a long walk and it’s terribly cold,” she said. “Please tell Marilla we will be back shortly.”
Davy pouted, but went back inside. When the door closed, Anne and Gilbert hurried to the grove where they’d chopped down the pine. Gilbert knelt in front of the trees and opened the cap to release the creature.
“Here we are, little one,” Anne said. “I’m so very sorry to have stolen you away from your family like this.”
The squirrel hopped out of the box, reared on its haunches and tittered at them for a moment, then scampered up the closest fir tree and out of sight.
“Well, no harm’s done,” Gilbert said.
“‘God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world,’” Anne said solemnly. She then felt broad, chilled fingers curl around her hand. “My goodness, Gilbert, where are your gloves?”
“I must have left them back at the hall,” he replied. “But what a story that squirrel will have to tell.”
Gilbert smiled, and Anne’s peals of laughter rang through the clearing. They stood for a moment under the benevolent silver moonlight, Anne holding both of Gilbert’s cold, large, bare hands between her smaller, softer ones. Anne and Gilbert were close in height, so she did not have to look up far to meet his merry, twinkling eyes. Why, Gilbert could almost be a kindred spirit now, she thought. She was so very grateful that they had become such good allies and friends.
And on his part, Gilbert felt he could lose himself forever in Anne’s shimmering green eyes, dancing with untold promise. And from that moment, no matter how many years he would have to wait, he was bound and determined to have that starry, dreamy gaze focused on him for the rest of his life.
In the meantime, however, there was a Christmas concert soon to oversee. “We should go back to the hall,” he reminded her after a moment. “The others will be waiting for us.”
Anne giggled. “Yes, Gilbert, of course, we should.” They made their way back to the hall in a comfortable silence, holding hands all the way.
When Anne and Gilbert opened the door, the inside of the hall had been transformed from its earlier chaos to a scene full of warmth and laughter. Jane, Diana, Julia, and Fred had returned in the meantime, and they had not failed at their canvassing. News of the suffering Christmas tree had sprouted wings as gossip always does; even those good villagers with the least imagination had their curiosities piqued by the novelty, so were eager to contribute when called upon.
And indeed, the tree was even heavier laden than before with the wealth of the village’s generosity: from simple paper chains, to the most elaborate crocheted doilies which served well as snowflakes, to ropes of cranberries and popcorn. More than one set of mittens adorned the branches, and there were even sticks of candies donated by Mr. William Blair from Carmody “for the children of Avonlea,” tied to the boughs with cheery red ribbon. Reader, a Christmas tree never finer was to be had on the whole of the Island that year than the Christmas tree of Avonlea.
Mrs. Lynde had arrived too, and even her rather waspish countenance was wreathed in a smile, as she raised an eyebrow at Anne’s and Gilbert’s pink grinning faces and clasping hands. “Well, I do declare, Happy Christmas!” Mrs. Lynde announced, and that benevolent woman nodded in approval.
“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Lynde!” Gilbert replied.
At that moment, Anne and Gilbert spied Marilla, who stood by herself gazing at the tree, and whose quiet face, Anne knew, hid a well-covered sadness. Gilbert released Anne’s hand, and she went over to her. Anne kissed Marilla’s cheek. “Oh Marilla, it’s a Christmas miracle, isn’t it?” she breathed.
“I do believe we could call it that,” Marilla replied, rather hoarsely, and she cleared her throat.
Anne nodded, and her eyes shone. “And wouldn’t Matthew have loved to see this tonight?”
At that Marilla gave a sad, reflective smile. “Yes, yes he would have,” Marilla said. “He’d be so very proud of you, Anne, for what you’ve brought together.”
And though Marilla didn’t say it, Anne heard Marilla’s pride and love too. “Merry Christmas, Marilla,” Anne said fervently.
“Merry Christmas, Anne.”