That Christmas of Jeremy's ninth year was one of the best that he
ever had; it was perhaps the last of the MAGICAL Christmases. After
this he was to know too much, was to see Father Christmas vanish
before a sum in arithmetic, and a stocking change into something
that "boys who go to school never have"--the last of the Christmases
of divine magic, when the snow fell and the waits sang and the
stockings were filled and the turkey fattened and the candles blazed
and the holly crackled by the will of God rather than the power of
man. It would be many years before he would realise that, after all,
in those early days he had been right. . .

A very fat book could be written about all that had happened during
that wonderful Christmas, how Hamlet the Dog caught a rat to his own
immense surprise; how the Coles' Christmas dinner was followed by a
play acted with complete success by the junior members of the
family, and it was only Mr. Jellybrand the curate who disapproved;
how Aunt Amy had a new dress in which, by general consent, she
looked ridiculous; how Mary, owing to the foolish kindness of Mrs.
Bartholomew, the Precentor's wife, was introduced to the works of
Charlotte Mary Yonge and became quite impossible in consequence; how
Miss Maple had a children's party at which there was nothing to eat,
so that all the children cried with disappointment, and one small
boy (the youngest son of the Precentor) actually bit Miss Maple; how
for two whole days it really seemed that there would be skating on
The Pool, and everyone bought skates, and then, of course, the ice
broke, and so on, and so on. . . there is no end to the dramatic
incidents of that great sensational time.

The theme that I sing, however, is Jeremy's Progress, and although