In Sweden the principal celebration with its distribution of gifts takes place late on Christmas Eve. Long before that day Keith began to watch every package brought into the house. Soon he noticed several that disappeared quickly without having been opened. Nor did it take his shrewd little mind long to figure out that they must have been stowed away on the upper shelf of the pantry back of the parlour. This was an excellent hiding-place because the shelf in question was fully six feet above the floor and on a level with the lintel of the doorway, so that its contents seemed as much out of reach as they were out sight from below. One day, however, Keith succeeded in getting into the parlour when both parents were out. The night before his father had come home with an unusually large and queerly shaped package under his arm and had taken it straight into the parlour. The boy's curiosity was at fever heat and got the better of his customary inertia in the face of explicit prohibitions. Having dragged a heavy wooden chair into the pantry, he placed its tall back directly against the shelves. The crosspieces in the back of the chair formed rungs on which he climbed up to the top shelf. It was quite a feat for a very small boy, but the slight timidity that characterized him as a rule was totally forgotten for the time. There was the mystifying package together with many others. He could even touch it with his hand. In spite of its size, it was very light. It was wider at the bottom than at the top, and it sounded hollow when he knocked at it. His little brain worked at high pressure, but not a guess came out of it that was at all plausible. Finally Keith had to climb down no wiser than he was before. His failure had one advantage. It freed him from all of guilt. It served also to keep his expectations at an unusually high pitch, so that when the morning of the great day arrived at last, it seemed as if he were facing twelve long hours of actual torture. Every one was very busy preparing not only for the feast of the evening, but for the two coming holidays. Christmas Day in Sweden being followed by a Second Christmas Day, equal to the first one in leisure if not in sanctity. No one had any time to spare for the boy, who found himself in the way wherever he turned. In the end he was ordered pointblank out of the kitchen, where his mother, Granny and the servant girl needed all the space at their disposal. The door to the parlour was closed although the lodger had left town for the holidays, and so nothing but the living-room remained. There Keith whiled away the long hours in vain speculation on the contents of the mysterious package. He tried to recall what things he had wished for during the year. He felt sure that nothing of the kind could be in the package. Any desire openly expressed was disregarded by his father, Keith thought, if not actually resented. The reason given was that a Christmas present should be a complete surprise, and if the recipient had openly asked for it, there could be no talk of surprising him. Of course, Keith could whisper what he wanted into his mother's ear now and then but always with the provision that she must convey the proper information to the father as coming from herself. Even this process of elimination failed, however, and so the day dragged on interminably, with no help from without for a mind weary of waiting. The customary dinner was passed up. Everybody snatched a bite off the kitchen table without breaking away from the work. Three or four times people arrived with packages from relatives or friends. Each visitor had to be treated, even though he be a stranger of the humblest character. Then dull monotony reigned once more, and Keith resumed his fidgeting back and forth between the kitchen door and his own corner. The old toys were simply unendurable.... It had long been dark when the father returned home at last, laden with parcels and tired out by personal delivery of Christmas gifts to the various members of the family. His face was slightly flushed and he talked with unusual eagerness. An atmosphere of reckless good-will surrounded him, and when he made a remark about there being no presents, even Keith knew it to be facetious. The last hour was the longest. The father and the mother had withdrawn to the parlour and closed the door behind them. The girl was setting the table and couldn't be disturbed. Granny was nervous and irritable because she knew that she would be forced to join the rest at the table that night. Keith felt like a disembodied soul let loose in infinite space without goal or purpose. Toward eight o'clock the parlour door opened and Keith was called in. A tiny Christmas tree stood on a table in a corner, glistening with lights and multicoloured paper festoons. It represented a great concession, because neither one of the parents cared much for the trouble involved. If there had been a number of children in the family, they said, then it would have been another matter. The truth was that Keith didn't care very much either. He clapped hands and shouted excitedly, of course, but his glances went sideways to the big sofa, where stood a huge hamper piled to twice its own height with parcels, all wrapped in snow-white paper and sealed with red sealing wax. The air of the room was charged with the rich smell of newly melted wax, and to Keith that smell was always the essence of Christmas, its chief symbol and harbinger. During those few minutes in the parlour a dozen tall candles had been lighted in the living-room, transforming the place that a moment before seemed so dreary. The dining table was opened to its full length and placed across the middle of the room, at right angles to the chaiselongue where Keith slept nights. Cut glass dishes and silver-ware shone in the light reflected from the spotlessly white table cloth. In the centre stood the Christmas layer cake, its body four inches thick and its top glistening with red and yellow and green pieces of candied fruit. Then began the little comedy regularly enacted every Christmas. "Isn't Granny coming," the father asked. Then he turned to Lena. "Tell her we are ready." "She says she doesn't want to come in," Lena reported after a hasty visit to the kitchen. "You go and ask her for me, Keith," was the father's next suggestion. "Thank you, dear," Granny said when Keith came to her with his message. "But you tell your father that I think the kitchen is a much better place for a useless old hag like myself." "Suppose you go," the father said to his wife on hearing Keith's modified version of Granny's reply. "She says she really won't come in," the mother explained a minute later. "You had better go out and ask her yourself, Carl. It is the one thing she cannot resist." The father went with a broad grin on his face. Keith laughed loudly and nervously, his eyes on the huge cake. But the mother said apologetically to Lena: "Mamma is so funny about coming in here, although she knows how much we want her." "Here she is now," said Lena. And the father appeared with Granny on his arm, and Granny was all dressed up in her best skirt of black silk thick as cloth, with a cap of black lace on her head. "Really, I can't see what you want with an old thing like me in here," she continued protesting as she was being led to her seat beside Keith. The girl sat opposite Granny, and the mother beside the girl, facing Keith. The father, on that one occasion, always occupied the chaiselongue at the short end of the table, with the mother on his right and Keith on his left. Beside him stood the hamper with its mountainous pile of parcels. Keith said grace with folded hands and bent head, and, of course, he had to say it twice because the first time he swallowed half the words in his eagerness to get through quickly. Then the meal began. It opened with a light smörgasbord, hors d'oeuvres, literally rendered sandwich-table: caviar, anchovy, sardines, shavings of smoked salmon, slices of bologna, and so on. With it the father took a snaps of Swedish gin or brännvin, and after much pressing Granny consented to take one, too. The main course consisted of lutfisk: dried and salted codfish that had been soaked in water for twenty-four hours to take out the salt and then boiled until it was tender as cranberry jelly. It was served with boiled potatoes and a gravy made of cream and chopped hard-boiled eggs. It was followed by risgrynsgröt: rice cooked in milk and served with a cover of sugar and cinnamon. Wherever Swedes go, they must have those two dishes on Christmas Eve. They have had them since the days when Christmas was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, when dried codfish was the staple winter food, and when rice was the rarest of imported delicacies. Keith did not become interested until the rice appeared and the father declared that no one could taste it until he or she had "rhymed over the rice." Lena had to begin, and blushingly she read: "To cook rice is a great feat, especially to get it sweet." Whereupon everybody applauded, and the mother followed: "Those who don't like rice are worse than little mice." The father made them all laugh by saying: "The rice is sweet and looks very neat, but now I want to eat." The cutting of the cake, with its coating of sugar and its many layers of custard ... the wine, port and sherry, poured from tall glass decanters with silver labels hung about their necks to show which was which ... the blushing native apples and the figs from distant sunlit shores ... the almonds and raisins that tested best when eaten together ... the candy and the caramels ... the absence of restraint and reproof ... the freedom to indulge one's utmost appetite ... the smiles and the pleasant words and the jokes sprung by the father ... and in the midst of it all a pause laden with rose-coloured melancholy.... "Why can it not be Christmas every day," asked Keith suddenly. "Because Christmas then would be like any other day," the father replied, reaching for the first parcel which was always for Keith. One by one they were handed out. Each one was elaborately addressed and furnished with a rhymed or unrhymed tag that often hid a sting beneath its clownish exterior. The father read the inscription aloud before he handed each parcel to its recipient, who had to open it and let its contents be admired by all before another gift was distributed. The table became crowded. The floor was a litter of paper. Lena giggled. Granny's cap was down on one ear. Keith could not sit still on his chair. "To Master Keith Wellander," the father read out. "A friendly warning, to be remembered in the morning and all through the day. He who slops at meals is a pig that squeals and hurts his parents alway." Keith took the parcel with less than usual zest. It was rectangular and very heavy. For a moment he hesitated to open it. There was something about its inscription that puzzled and bothered him. At last the wrapper came off, and he gazed uncomprehendingly at a large piece of wood hollowed out like a canoe. "A boat ..." he stammered. "A trough," rejoined his father, a strange, almost embarrassed look appearing on his face. "This is Christmas and I want you to be happy, but you must learn to eat decently, and I thought this might serve you as a lesson and a reminder." Keith said nothing. He sat looking at that piece of wood as if it were a dragon that had swallowed the whole Christmas in a single gulp. He wanted to cry, but for the first time he seemed to feel a pride that forbade him to do so.... "Master Keith Wellander," the father read out again with evident haste and in a voice which he tried to make very jolly, "When beaten in the open field, this will be my trusty shield." It was the package--and the trough was forgotten. The boy trembled with excitement. His hands tore vainly at the paper cover, which, in the end, had to be removed by the father. On the table, fully revealed at last, stood a real fortress of cardboard, with a drawbridge that could be raised, and a tower in the centre, and at the top of it a flagstaff flying the Swedish colours. It was his heart's most cherished desire, the thing that had seemed so unattainable that he had deemed it useless to whisper it into his mother's ear. For a long while he did not move at all, but just looked and looked, seemingly afraid to touch the new toy. Then a warm flood of joy shot through him, and suddenly he was seized by an irresistible impulse to kiss his father--which was a most unusual endearment between them. As he put his hand on the table to get off the chair, it touched the trough, and once more his mood changed. He seemed to stiffen, and all he could do was to hold out his hand and whisper: "Thank you very much, papa!"