Clarice Bean, Think Like an Elf

The Beginning of Things
One thing we all agree on in our house is that we like looking forward to Christmas.
My favorite song for this time of the year is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I'm not sure exactly what it's about. I used to think it was Christmas shopping, but Betty Moody says it has to do with the twelve days AFTER Christmas.
But why would someone give you ALL those presents when it is all OVER?
And why would they give you so many BIRDS?
It might be about the holiday sales, but Betty says they DIDN'T have sales in the olden days.
When the Christmas season begins, I sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" ALL THE TIME, but I tend not to know what comes AFTER the seven swans are swimming.
Speaking of seven, we also have seven in our family. Which is:
my mom and my dad;
my older brother, Kurt;
my older sister, Marcie;
Me, Clarice Bean;
my grandad, who is an actual live-in older relative;
and my younger brother, Minal Cricket.
If we were like those families in the books, we would look like THIS, all nicely sitting down, listening to each other in a smiling way—like you see on Christmas cards.
But usually, actually, we look more like THIS. . . which is talking or NOT talking all at the same time from different rooms.
I live on Navarino Street, number 7, and I know LOTS of the people on our road. At Christmastime there is more helloing and this is because of the Christmas spirit.
Christmas cannot be Christmas without the Christmas spirit, so it is IMPORTANT to keep an eye on it and NOT let it float away.

ONE
Christmas Is Coming, the Goose Is Getting Fat
You can tell when it’s getting to be Christmas because Mom gets out the Christmas-elf dish towels. We have three of them although we used to have four. Granny sent them to us—they are from New York and along the bottom they say “Think Like Elves” in embroidery.
We have special Christmas water glasses too, which have reindeers on the sides. They are very old. No one must break them because they are heirlooms of the family and very much the spirit of Christmas.
Every year Dad says, “We drank from these glasses when I was a small child and NOT one of them has ever been dropped.”
This makes me very actually nervous.
There are only six so not quite enough to go around, but Grandad says he’s happy with a less valuable water glass, as he suffers from the collywobbles, which basically means he is liable to drop a glass at any moment.
The other thing which usually happens is that we all bake gingerbread cookies, which are decorated with icing. They are sort of chewy and NOT necessarily that nice unless you are
in the mood. But I don’t mind because it is another sign that Christmas is coming.
Something you may also notice is that there is more mail: electric bills with holly printed on the envelope, and cards from people who you can’t remember who they are.
If I come downstairs to hear Mom saying, “Who are Beryl and Terrance?” and Dad saying, “I haven’t got a clue,” then I know that Christmas has begun.
Actually we never know who Beryl and Terrance are.
I’m beginning to wonder if they even know us.
Also we don’t know who J and P and W (Farrell) are, even though they always write in the card “Really enjoyed bumping into you this summer” or “W is doing really well with his clarinet.”
Once the Christmas cards begin to arrive, we arrange them on the kitchen table and Mom always says, “It’s so lovely to think of all these people from all these far-off places taking the trouble to write and send us good cheer.”
And then when more arrive, we line them up along the living-room shelves and then along the kitchen shelves and Mom says, “Look at that—the spirit of Christmas!”
And then when even more come, we crowd them on the window ledges and always a few of them fall into the kitchen sink.
And Mom says, “These cards are a blimming nuisance.”
But really there is nowhere else to put them, so it is unavoidable that some end up getting wet.
We used to hang them up on a string across the kitchen, but then one year some of them decided to fall into the stir-fry and they got set on fire, and it could have been much worse if Kurt hadn’t thrown a wet dish towel over the wok.
My Uncle Ted, who is a firefighter, told us our Christmas cards were a FIRE HAZARD waiting to happen. He was right, and we were lucky not to lose more than the Christmas-elf dish towel.
He said, “You just CANNOT have Christmas cards dangling over open flames. What were you thinking?”
Everyone looked sheepish. So now there is a strict law in our house about cards—when too many arrive the ugly ones get shuffled into the recycling.
I say, “Mom, you do know you are throwing people’s Christmas spirit in the actual trash can?”
And Mom whispers, “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone!”