C (5:38)

And so it was that on on that year's Christmas Eve, clad in his splendid new red coat and breeches, Klaus found himself shuffling cautiously along the roof of the first house on his delivery rounds. He looked down at Anna, standing in the sleigh. You're doing very well, anna hissed up to him encouragingly. Klaus found that he did not have quite the head for heights he had imagined. But in another few steps he was at the chimney, and luckily in those days chimneys were very short. He peered down it and saw only darkness good. No fire burning down below. Then he let down the toy he was carrying, one of his signature bears by one of Anna's embroidery threads. When it was a few inches above the fireplace, he he swung the thread wide and let it go, and heard the bear land satisfyingly on the floor beyond the hearth thump he had just delivered for the very first time a Christmas toy down a chimney and thus safe from the thievery of Rolf Eckhoff. He turned around and grinned at Anna down below. Thank you for thinking of this, he mouthed. She helped him down from the roof and they were quickly off to the next house.

C (7:03)

True, letting toys down chimneys or simple smoke holes, as many of the village houses had instead took extra time. And true also Klaus landed a few toys in smouldering remnants of nighttime fires at first and had to try again with a second toy. But the novel deliveries only had to be made in his own village, where Rolf Eckhoff was lurking. And with Dasher's speed, he and Anna easily made up the time on the rest of their appointed rounds, including the village on the other side of the mountain. They were home three hours before the matins bell chimed in the frosty Christmas dawn, and amid the clamour and glee of the children which floated up to their house, as they stood tired but satisfied, arm in arm on the threshold of their house, they did not hear one wail or sob. All the blessed toys were safe.

C (8:01)

Nor did they hear the muffled shriek of rage and frustration from inside Rolf Eckhoff's house. He tried to shut out all the happiness with a feather pillow over his head, but found that he could not. His mind was poisoned now, almost beyond reason or reclaiming, and any success of Claus's or crossing of his own plans heated his blood so intolerably that to cool it he had to smash or rend whatever object his eye lit upon. This he did now.

C (8:36)

And I'm afraid his house suffered for it, starting with the feather pillow, which he tore so violently that for a whole minute there was a blizzard inside his house. But an hour afterwards he sat on the floor, for he had broken all his chairs and brooded his revenge in cold, clear anger. He did not know what he would do, he did not know when he would think of it, but he knew that he would. And Rolf Eckhoff was the sort of man who could wait.

B (9:09)

Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell, oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy break up.

C (9:28)

With bland breakfast and taste AMPM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with cage free egg, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. A.m. p.m. Too much good stuff.

D (9:39)

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C (10:12)

And so the years flew by. And no man can stop their flight. Nor should they try. Each Christmas, Klaus and Anna and Dasha delivered toys to a wider and wider realm of children. Each year, Klaus became more and more expert at letting toys down chimneys and smoke holes as a ward against Rolf Eckhoff, until it became his preferred method of toy delivery. Though in truth, Rolf Eckhoff never again tried to steal Christmas toys. And people in all the villages learned to damp down their fires before they retired on Christmas Eve. It wasn't long before Klaus devised a special knot that he could undo with a deft flick of his wrist. And just as a toy came to rest on a floor, leaving it standing upright and allowing him to whisk its thread back up the chimney. And in this way, the legend grew that somehow Klaus was taking the toys down the chimney himself. An absurd notion which persists to this day, despite Klaus having scattered physics textbooks among his Christmas deliveries in recent years.

C (11:21)

For a jest, some tucked the toys Klaus delivered into the freshly washed stockings they set on their hearths to dry, or placed them under the evergreen boughs they hung about their houses as a reminder that though the world was frozen, spring would come again.

C (11:44)

Anna and Klaus continued in their professions for their need of extra means to prepare, purchase wood and carving tools grew greater and greater. Anna stitched Klaus joined and worked wood each year was busier than the year before. Still, Anna found time to indulge her new passion for cooking ever more sumptuous meals. And Klaus found time to eat them. And since Anna's dishes tended more, much more, towards the gravy and dumpling and goose variety, still and always Klaus's favourite meal, than they did towards the celery and cottage cheese and one single radish on a plate variety, Klaus's girth improved wonderfully. And when after years of selfless toil, Anne hit on the miraculous maple sugar cookie recipe for which she became so justly renowned, then Klaus was finally able to fulfill the prophecy with which the villagers had teased him during that first year after the Black Death. You'll Grow fat if you keep eating like that. So be it, he had said then. And so be it, he said now as he kissed his talented wife. So long as Dasher doesn't mind the extra weight and the villagers roofs hold, so be it.

C (13:07)

But Anna's culinary talents did not extend only to Klaus. No person in the village under Mount Feldburg ever went hungry if Anna could help it. So long as her larder held out. Anna fed all and sundry, and heaven help anyone who tried to resist a second helping of anything. They got a tongue lashing about keeping up their strength and were then watched over until they had eaten everything she had devised for them. And so when the harvests were good, all girths improved as the years rolled by. But specially did Anna see to the retired widowers of the worshipful Guild of Foresters, Carpenters and Woodworkers. They had made of Claus old house an ever expanding warren as each added on his own room. But they took their meals in a splendid common dining hall they had laboured together to construct. The joke went round the guild that you had better retire hungry because Anna was going to fill you right up to the brim once she got you in that hall. In due course, Father Goswin, having heard the joke, moved in, even though he was not a member of the guild and had not retired. You all need spiritual guidance in your waning years, he said. Pass me the shepherd's pie. He was welcomed, and he soon wrote a moving epistle to the bishop about how he had founded this charitable institution for widowers, which was no more than he came to believe.

C (14:47)

If the years were busy for Klaus and Anna, they were also jolly. Both knew the deep contentment of loving, the useful work that they did. They scarcely noticed the advancing streaks of white in their hair and Klaus's beard. And they certainly paid no attention to the lines which laughter brought to their faces. In their hearts and in the hardihood of their bodies, they seemed age proof. If they had one sorrow, it was that no children of their own had come to them. But then, as Klaus often said and Anna agreed, it tempts fate. Heaven, Father Goswin corrected them, for two happy people to have all their desire. And surely they felt a stake in the lives of hundreds of children. Throughout the villages of the Black Forest. Life went on like this, pleasantly, for years and years and still more years. And then something extraordinary happen.

C (15:58)

One summer, Rolf Eckhoff turned up at the retirement home. Certainly he had reached retirement age and he was not a widower only because he had Never married. Some 31 years had passed since his mischief with the toys, which Klaus had never revealed to anyone but Anna, and no sequel had followed. But no one expected to see him standing at the door with his possessions in a cart behind him. I have a right to be here. He barked at the guild member who answered the door. I've worked hard all my life.

C (16:35)

Well, how could he be refused? As Father Goswin noted, even the uncharitable have a claim on charity. He had made his life a lonely, bitter one, but still his loneliness was real.

C (16:51)

Rolf Eckhorff may share my room, said one of the widowers, until he builds his own. Which Rolf Eckhoff soon did, and if it was not as skilfully made as some others in the winding old house, no one was unkind enough to comment on it. And certainly Rolf Eckhoff seemed to be a new man in retirement. He did not actually smile, and nor did he ever do much talking, but he did help. Having cooked and cleaned for himself all his life, which few in the house had done, he made himself useful all around the place, but specially around the cook stove. And anyone who cooks will always find some welcome wherever he goes. Soon even Klaus and Anna reconciled with their old enemy, and though their doing so was much criticised in the court of historical opinion, I have always maintained that, despite what happened later, they did right to forgive him.

C (17:54)

On the Christmas Eve after Rolf Eckhoff came to the retirement house, Klaus readied himself for a long night of deliveries. The very last village in the Black Forest had been added to his rounds at the St. Bartholomew's Fair that summer, and so he would be travelling farther than ever in his enormous toy bag now, a dozen flour sacks, stitched together and embroidered all over by Anna, with likenesses of Roman emperors and mythical beasts and constellations, major and minor, were over 600 toys. This year's new item was a puzzle box made of white pine and ash, which opened, if one pushed sliding panels in just the right way. Inside each was a flower seed, so that the children could look forward through the winter to planting it in the spring and seeing what kind of vegetable or flower it would be. Klaus heaved the huge sack into the sleigh. Dasher stamped the snow, eager to be off, as impatient as ever, for though the weight he pulled had grown steady steadily over the years due to the increase in the number of toys and the belt size of their maker, it was still a trifle to him. Klaus hesitated. A corner of his heart was heavy. Anna was not coming with him, and it was the first time this had happened. I'm just feeling under the weather, Klaus. It's nothing to worry about, she had said. I won't go. It's just one year. Not go? What utter nonsense. You are responsible for our children. If you don't bring them toys, their parents will make up any number of reasons why they don't deserve them. But Hannah, if you are ill and need looking after. She had fixed him with her bright blue eyes. Do not presume, Carpenter, that because you are the handsomest man in the Black Forest, you know anything about leechcraft. I'll be fine. I've made a broth. Master Eckhoff has brought me the herbs. Then she had laughed her silvery laugh, which dispelled all gloom, and he had felt much better, except for that one small corner of his heart. And as the night wore on, the troubled feeling in that corner spread and spread. Klaus and Dasher delivered the toys to the houses of his own village in good time, and as well as to the three villagers east and west. But for the first time it brought Klaus no real pleasure. He was distracted. Was Anna all right? He kept wondering. Should he have left her? Dasher was racing up the steep track that went over a shoulder of Mount Feldberg and was just clearing the tree line when Klaus suddenly signalled for him to stop. The sleigh slid to a halt. Dasher snorted once, and then all was silent. The winter stars and half a moon glimmered down on the two. Klaus got out of the sleigh and stood beside it. He did not know why he had stopped. He had never done so before, unless there was a runner which needed fixing, or a harness buckle in need of adjustment. But now he felt a need to be still, to wait. Something was happening, he felt, though he didn't know what.

C (21:19)

He looked down into the valley at his village. Waves of frigid air wafted up from there and made him shiver. He pulled his crimson coat close, but he could not get warm. The cold made Klaus feel suddenly weary to his bones. He caught a glimpse of his own beard, almost all white now as it caught the icy breeze and danced before his eyes. I'm old, he thought. Too old to keep making these deliveries. For it seemed to Klaus that the weight of the years he had ignored so long now piled themselves upon him all at once. They made him stoop and stagger.

C (22:02)

At this, Dasher grew alarmed. He stamped a hoof and snorted again. He rubbed Klaus with his glossy flank as if trying to rally him. He caught Klaus's gaze in his large brown reindeer's eyes. And to Klaus it seemed as if those eyes were urging him to do something. But what? He was so tired. Impulsively, he threw his arms around Dasher's neck, his own eyes filling with sad and weary tears.

C (22:33)

Great heart, he spoke low into the ear of the beast. I feel my strength is gone. I feel I'm at the end of things. What shall I do now? It happened that Dasher had been waiting through all these decades for Klaus to speak to him, spirit to spirit. For though he was Anna's dear, in truth he had been made for Klaus. And now that Klaus had finally spoken to him, not as a man talks idly to a beast, but as one soul seeks out another, Dasher was able at last to reply.

C (23:13)

Your strength is not gone, Klaus, he said. Indeed, the beginning of your true strength is about to come upon you. You have spoken to me as one soul to another, he said, and that has unleashed the magic.

C (23:31)

And then the reindeer threw back his great antlered head and bugled as no reindeer had ever bugled before, or ever has since.

C (23:44)

The frosty air rang with the immense sound. It echoed and re echoed up into the heavens, what seemed like a full minute.

C (23:56)

Then silence fell for another minute while Jupiter, Klaus's jovial star, beamed benevolently down on them. Then Klaus heard the sound of sleigh bells and looked down the track to see who was approaching. But the sound wasn't coming from the track. It wasn't coming from anywhere on the shoulder of the mountain or from the valley below. It was coming from above Klaus's head.

C (24:22)

He looked up in wonder. For coming fast from the north, cleaving the cold air in strict formation, were seven reindeer, six almost as large and deep chested as Dasher himself, The seventh, a female, more dainty. And these reindeer were flying, not metaphorically, but really, truly flying. Swift as eagles, fast as racehorses. They galloped through a rack of cloud, and their antlers flashed in the moonlight as they scattered it in all directions. I've seen many astonishing sights in my life, klaus reported years later, but none to compare with that. They were so fierce and alive, coming on like quicksilver flashing across the sky. I shall never forget it. I was utterly changed in an instant, and so is everyone who has had the privilege of seeing that sight.

C (25:21)

One of the reindeer gripped a harness in its teeth, and it was the bells from this which Klaus had heard. They alighted and pressed up against Dasher as though to reacquaint themselves with him. It has been long, brother, Klaus heard one say. Dasher looked at Klaus and saw his deep bewilderment. We are not demons, Klaus, or angels. We are reindeer, just as you see us. But we were awakened long ago for this very purpose. For the moment when your burden would prove too taxing. Harness us. And so, in a kind of dream, Klaus removed Dash's tack from the sleigh and replaced it with a new harness. With Dasher in the lead, all eight reindeer stepped into their traces, and Klaus buckled them in. Now get in the sleigh, Klaus, and hang on, for we, Dasher shouted as all the reindeer poured the snow, are the eight fliers. And just as Klaus found his seat in the sleigh, and not a split second too soon, the reindeer leapt into the air like an arrow shot from a bow.

C (26:37)

Klaus's first flight was more glorious than any of us who have not ridden in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer can ever know. After a few moments of initial vertigo and not knowing up from down, he took to flying in his sleigh as if he had been born to it, which, of course, he had.

C (27:00)

He exulted in the wind blowing through his hair and at the sight of the sleeping villagers below and the wheeling stars above. And when he thought of how quickly he would be able to get his toys to the children now and then, when he thought that he could be let down to a roof rather than having to climb up to it. And then finally, when he thought how quickly he would be back by Anna's side, sheer joy bubbled up in him.

C (27:28)

He began and then.

C (27:31)

Noted as he warmed to his theme. And then finally, in his deep, rich bass.

C (27:38)

He laughed as he sailed through the roaring winter night.

C (27:54)

Klaus was through with his deliveries so early on this astonishing Christmas Eve that he thought for once he would be able to get half a good night's sleep. The flyers landed the sleigh with a hiss of runners between his house and Dasher's stable.

C (28:11)

Thank you, Comet. Thank you, Rickson, my girl, he said. Thank you, Cupid and Donner and Prancer and Blitzen and Dancer. He put his hand on Dasher's neck and thank you, my old friend. What a night. Good night, Klaus, said Dasher. He yawned like a cavern. We'll sleep under the pines tonight. Sought accommodations out in the morning, and he trotted away with his brothers and sisters.

C (28:48)

Through the window, Klaus saw a candle lit in their bedroom. He smiled to think how surprised Anna would be to see him home so early. But when he got to his bedroom, what he saw at first was not Anna but Father Goswin. He was sitting in a chair beside their big bed, dressed in his church vestments and speaking Latin, when Klaus entered the room. The priest looked up and Klaus saw the tears on his face. Then he saw his beloved wife, small and still, under the coverlet on the bed, her eyes closed. He did not understand. Anna was never still. I'm so sorry, father Goswin said. I have administered the last rites.

C (29:38)

Klaus collapsed in a swoon.

C (29:44)

Rolf Eckhorff, of course, had fled long ago.

B (30:03)

The Christmas Chronicles is written by Tim Slover. Music is by Robert Robary. The series producer is Judith Olson Turney. Technical producer is Jackie Tateishi Executive producer is Walter Rudolph. For more information about the Christmas Chronicles, visit classical89.org the Christmas Chronicles is produced by Classical89 KBYU FM, Provo, Utah.

E (30:29)

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D (31:30)

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