A Boy Called Christmas

An impossibility is just a possibility you don’t understand yet

To lose someone you love is the very worst thing in the world. It creates an invisible hole that you feel you are falling down and will never end. People you love make the world real and solid and when they suddenly go away forever, nothing feels solid any more.

Perhaps a wish was just a hope with better aim.

To see something, you have to believe in it. Really believe it. That's the first elf rule. You can't see something you don't believe in. Now try your hardest and see if you can see what you have been looking for.

So he knew terrible things- even the most terrible things-couldn't stop the world from turning. Life went on. And he made a promise to himself that, when he grew older, he'd try to be like his mother. Colourful, and happy and kind and full of joy.

How to be jolly even when times are bad 1. Eat more gingerbread, chocolate, jam and cake. 2. Say the word ‘Christmas’. 3. Give someone a present. Like a toy, or a book, or a kind word, or a big hug. 4. Laugh, even if there is nothing to laugh about. Especially then. 5. Think of a happy memory. Or a happy future. 6. Wear something red. 7. Believe. (extract from How to Be Jolly: The Father Christmas Guide to Happiness)

There was no use trying to think of a way, because it was impossible. And the only way you could make something impossible real wasn't through logic or sensible thinking. No. It was to believe it could be done.

Most people grow up gradually, over many years, but standing there in the still forest, Nikolas lost his childhood in a second. Nothing makes you grow up quicker than discovering your father is not the man you think he is.

Now, Nikolas was a happy boy. Well, actually, no. He would have told you he was happy, if you asked him, and he certainly tried to be happy, but sometimes being happy is quite tricky. I suppose what I am saying is that Nikloas was a boy who believed in happiness, the way he believed in elves and trolls and pixies, but he had never actually seen an elf or a troll or a pixie, and he hadn't really seen proper happiness either. At least, not for a very long time. He didn't have it easy.

... when someone is good, or kind, it’s a magic in itself. It gives people hope. And hope is the most wonderful thing there is.

Sometimes,’ she said, as her eyes shone wide and bright, ‘people look up to people not for who they have been, but for what they could become. For what they know they could be. They see in you something special.

Trouble doesn’t always have to be caused. It’s sometimes already there.

Life is pain,” he said, sadly. “But it’s also magic, Papa.

Every day, not only did he wear his red and white outfit, complete with shiny black belt and boots, but he was determined to be as jolly as could be, because the easiest way to make other people happy was to be happy yourself, or at least to act as if you were. That was how his mother had done it. And even his father too, once upon a time.

Everyone knew that the way to make something even lovelier was to put it in a pie.

Nothing makes you grow up quicker than discovering your father is not the man you think he is.

If you keep on climbing a mountain, you will eventually reach the top. That’s the thing with mountains. However big they are, there is always a top. Even if it takes all through the day and all through another night, you will usually get there, if you keep remembering there is a top.

A ver short chapter with a long title, in which not very much happens.

I do like you,’ said Miika, in his quiet mouse language, ‘even though you are not a dairy product.

the west. ‘Trouble doesn’t always have to be caused. It’s sometimes already there.

You have the power to do good, and you know it.

Miika had disappeared. And then Nikolas felt so dreadful he said something equally dreadful. The very worst thing that anyone can ever say. (Close your eyes and ears, especially if you are an elf.) “There is no magic,” he whispered, delirious. And after that, everything became darkness.

Back in Mother Ivy’s time I would have been obliged to cook you gingerbread and show you my spickle dancing, and yet now I have permission to chop you up into little pieces. I cry myself to sleep every night, and feel dead inside, but society is definitely improving.

Listen, I know you think my father was a bad human, and it was a bad thing he did, but there was good, too. He was just weak. We had no money. Humans are... complicated.

Magic was useless by itself. Making impossibilities possibilities was harder than it looked.

do like you,’ said Miika, in his quiet mouse language, ‘even though you are not a dairy product.