A community learns that the spirit of Christmas stretches past youth.

"Christmas is for kids,” said Pete Kunkel to the stove. Two of the other old timers, gathered around the Charter Oak, nodded sagely, all watching the yellow flames flicker behind the vents in the stove door. The saying was comfortable and well worn, like the stove, the chairs and the shelves of the cozy country store where they met each morning in winter to get their mail. Above, the north wind sang in the tall chimney flue—a thin, reedy tune that whistled up snow.

The third old timer, a tall, cheerful-looking man with intense eyes under brows the size of white mice, laughed at Pete’s saying and said, “Since when?”

Jimmy Butler, the store’s owner and the oldest man there, spoke from his place behind the cluttered counter, “Why Doc, I’ve heard that said all my life.”

The sitting men nodded, more to age and experience than to the saying itself.

Pete, the youngest at 60 years, thinking he had just made small talk on the coming season, looked up at their retired doctor friend with puzzlement.

“You don’t think Christmas is fer kids, Doc? And you with half a dozen grandchildren?”

“Oh, it’s for kids, all right,” said Doctor Roy, sitting on a stack of canned goods left unpacked for the sitting, “And I used to say that too.”

He leaned toward the stove and put his hands out to share the warmth. The others observed Doctor Roy’s hands. These hands had done a lot of good, and they went with his voice—soothing, strong and old with experience.

“But let me tell you a story,” said Doc. “Thirty years ago, just before Christmas, I got a call to go see about Miz Myrtle Gates. Remember her?” His listeners nodded, and Jimmy said, “I should, I went to school to Miz Myrtle.”

“Well, that was before my time,” said Dorsey, the man in charge of the stove door. Leaning, he spit in the ash box and cracked the vents open a bit, the fire’s light checkering his beard. “But my Pa told about her teachin’ at Persimmon Ridge School, forty-year-ago. Pa said she was up in years then, but still glib as a quail, and would go out to help the eighth graders bring in a Christmas tree.”

“I’m glad your dad remembers that time,” said Doc, “because when I drove out to the old Gates farm and saw her all those years ago, she weighed 80 pounds and was so bent with age and rheumatism she couldn’t get out of bed to tend a fire.”

Doctor Roy shook his head at the memory. “If it hadn’t been for Vera Dunn, on her way to teach school, noticing there was no smoke from the chimney and going up to see about her, I wouldn’t have been able to do much for that old lady. As it was, I just got her to the hospital in time.”

Pete, rolling a homemade cigarette, nodded his appreciation of the story. “A schoolteacher savin’ another one because she had sense enough to look fer smoke from a chimney,” he said. “People done that back in them days.”

“They’d do it nowadays too, I expect, if people had woodstoves,” said Doctor Roy, “But let me tell you what happened from that call Vera made. Vera had been a student of Miz Gates, and when she put the word out just before Christmas that Miz Myrtle Gates wasn’t able to cook or keep up a fire, you’ve never seen anything like the turnout of people who showed up to offer help. That old woman had put that instinct to look out for other people into everyone she taught.”

“Well now,” said Jimmy. “You know, come to think of it, Miz Myrtle made a big thing of Christmas when she taught school. Said it ‘was the bow that tied the year up into a package,’ and always had a big party for all the children and their folks. Had the kids put on a play; recite something to show what they’d learned. I reckon she used Christmas to bring all the families together.”

“Jimmy,” said Doctor Roy,” I think she did a lot more than that to their lives, because all her students over 50 years of her teaching began to come out of the woodwork before Christmas to visit her in the hospital.” The elderly doctor smiled at his memory.

“And they didn’t come just to decorate her room with cedar boughs and pine cones either, though they sure did that. They came to share Christmas with that old lady, to sing to her, tell her what they’d made of their lives, read to her, quote things she’d told them, show pictures of their children. They’d tell her how they’d memorized her favorite Christmas poems and songs and passed them on. I’ll tell you, I went to see her twice a day, and I had to stand in line to doctor Miz Myrtle. She had made Christmas shine out like one of the Ten Commandments to all those kids, like it was a way to look at everything else in their lives, a time to quit worrying about yourself and figure out what you could do for someone else.”

The ancient stove hissed and clanked in the silence that followed this long speech, and Doctor Roy stood up with a sigh, his joints creaking.

“Well, it’s just a story,” he apologized. “Someone else could tell it better, I’m sure.”

“So what became of the old lady?” asked Dorsey.

“About what you’d expect,” said Doc, pulling on his gloves. “She was 86 years old and she died before New Year’s day. But I can tell you one thing; she died happy, and her dying reminded me that Christmas, whatever you want to think of it, isn’t just for kids.”

The old doctor sighed and scratched his head, wanting to get home before it snowed, but wanting to say his thoughts right.

“It seems to me,” he said, “Old Myrtle reminded those grown up school kids of hers that Christmas is for everybody who remembers being a kid, when your mind’s open to any excuse, like Santa Claus, for giving gifts to people and finding time enough to reach into each other’s lives.”

The doctor pulled a wool cap over his ears, picked up his mail and walked to the door before he turned for his parting shot.

“I guess that old gal reminded me that we mustn’t depend on kids to do that for us.”

He raised a gloved hand to everyone. “Well, Merry Christmas to you!”

When the door had closed, Pete Kunkel looked at Dorsey and at Jimmy, shook his head solemnly and went back to watching the yellow flames of the Charter Oak capture winter.

“Ain’t that just like old Doc?” he commented to the world in general. “All I said is that Christmas is for kids. And Doc, he wanted to make a prescription out of it!”