She lost her nerve, deciding instantly she could do it alone even if it took all night, and blurted, “It’s okay if you don’t want to help, I’ll do it myself.” And she whirled and escaped, going as fast as her feet could take her.
He found her in the back hallway, dragging a huge bag filled with wrapped presents. Without a word, he reached around her and hefted it up as if it weighed no more than a pencil, turned and walked away.
She noticed he was wearing shoes.
She ran to her rooms to get more.
Once they had all the stuff in the library where the tree was and where the children had decided they wanted Christmas, he stood there dubiously eyeing the bags and boxes filled to overflowing and the vast piles of presents already under the tree.
“This is ridiculous,” Douglas stated correctly. It looked like Santa and his whole workshop of elves had exploded in the room.
“Mom and I wanted to make sure that –” Julia started to explain as she took the stockings from the mantel.
“I understand,” he murmured, interrupting her, and she fell silent because he sounded like he understood, very much.
As she worked, she began to realise he seemed at odds as to what to do. He likely never played Santa before and she gently gave him directions which he carried out without hesitation.
Feeling strange that they were doing this joyful business in complete silence, she asked, “What were your Christmases like?”
“What do you mean?” He was putting an orange in the toe of each stocking.
“Did you have stockings like this or pillowcases at the end of your bed?” she inquired, suddenly very curious about what his childhood was like.
Tamsin never spoke of her childhood, at least not to Julia. Julia knew that Tamsin worked herself into exhaustion putting every ounce of magic into Christmas that she could stuff into it and she figured Tammy was holding up a tradition (even if it was hard to envision Monique stuffing a stocking, it wasn’t hard to envision her ordering Mrs. K to do so).
“Neither,” Douglas replied and Julia’s hand stilled in the process of following him along the stockings tipping into them the American Christmas chocolates her mother had sent.
“Neither?” she stared at him confused.
Douglas didn’t answer.
Julia tried again. “Did you open your presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?”
Finished with the oranges, he started to sort the presents in a box marked “Stocking Stuffers”.
“We received our present at dinner.”
His tone invited no further questioning but she was too stunned by this strange piece of information to let it slide. What did he mean, “present”, in singular, and whoever heard of a child getting one present at dinner?
Thinking he didn’t understand her question, she clarified, “No, I mean when you were children.”
He continued his work, seeming engrossed in it.
“At dinner,” was all he said.
An uneasy feeling stole through her. Even Monique (who was, thankfully, taking the holiday with friends in Munich) could not be so cold as to give her children one present at Christmas dinner.
She pressed on. “What was your favourite present ever?”
“My father gave me some stock in Microsoft. I made a fortune on it.”
She gasped, she couldn’t stop herself. “When you were a child, your parents gave you stock for your Christmas present?”
Douglas shrugged, completely calm, he began to stuff the sorted presents in the stockings. “Every year. Practical and long-lasting.”
These words slammed into Julia like sledgehammers.
Christmas presents were not meant to be practical and long-lasting. They were meant to be impractical and no parent was allowed to get angry if the child broke them or lost interest in them before New Year’s. It was Christmas Law.