Christmas Is Tomorrow
Brendan Dill
It was when the snowmen parading around with Woe Is Me and Doom Is Near signs began to obstruct traffic that the ladies and gentlemen of Twin Pines decided that to take action was inevitable. Twin Pines was a community known for its peaceful quality of life, and the new active morbidity that the snowmen had decided to exercise that winter would soon disturb that reputation. The decision was nearly unanimous. Although many had sympathy for the dire straits these snowmen were thrust into every winter, they would all be dead by April. The residents of Twin Pines could do nothing but express their condolences and go on with their daily lives—undisturbed by traffic obstructed by snowmen protesting their own mortality. And so hands were raised at the town meeting, and it was decided. Snowmen protesting in the streets were to be immediately arrested, and execution was to be their sentence.
However, the agreement that a snowman’s life was significantly less valuable due to its imminent doom was also nearly unanimous among the ladies and gentlemen of the Twin Pines town meeting, especially because a good number of the snowmen seemed to be dying to get it over with anyway. In fact, so compelling was their suicidal nature that money was raised the previous year via very successful bake sales to establish a clinic for snowman euthanasia. Making this option open to the snowmen seemed at the time to be an economical and humanitarian choice; however, this idea soon proved false as few snowmen attended. After the clinic shut down, it became popular among members of the community to say that the snowmen got their kicks out of prognosticating their own deaths, but didn’t have the “snowballs” or the “cold resolve” to finish the deed themselves.
Execution seemed a clean option, though—self-elected or not. As long as there weren’t too many snowmen at a time, the local crematorium disposed of them with little fuss and a lot of steam. Also, as those who rallied for snowman disposal often argued, the fewer of them there were, the less disastrous Melting Day would be. The snowmen seemed to have a prophetic ability to know the day on which they would all melt and die, and on that day they would all congregate in the center of town—right between the Edwards Cinemas and the Stop & Shop—and melt together. While this act was seen by some to be a stunningly poetic death ritual, most others who had to deal with the resulting flood every year were at the very least frustrated by the messy melodrama. Those who were more than frustrated argued for execution or even genocide, and their voices had been heard, as reflected in the recent law enforcement decision.
Not, of course, that earlier attempts had not been made to solve this snowman problem. The town authorities, come November of every year, worked double time to make sure snowmen were not built. Those noble efforts by the police and many a volunteer, however, were largely unsuccessful, as every winter a fresh population of depressive, coal-eyed snowmen sprouted and began to moan about mortality and death again. Even with the Carrot Embargo enacted in 1996, snowmen continued to be born, either with candles for noses or no noses at all. And so in 1997, the Embargo was revoked. If they must have snowmen, the ladies and gentlemen of the Twin Pines town meeting decided, they might as well have proper looking snowmen. So the carrot business flourished once more.
There were many theories about how the snowmen continued to be built every year despite the seemingly popular opinion against them. Some old men, who with their teeth had lost their tact, blamed “them goddamned kids.” Others of a more political inclination supported a conspiracy theory that the snowmen were placed there by post-Soviet Communists to thwart the capitalist success of the upper-middle-class people in residence at Twin Pines. Then, of course, some pointed their fingers straight back at the capitalists, citing the enormous figures of revenue gained by the tourist appeal of a town with live snowmen. No one really knew for sure who was to blame, but everyone seemed political that winter.
In fact, many claimed, politics was the reason the snowmen had resorted to protesting on the streets that year rather than just whining and moaning about their impending deaths in the less radical manner usual to winters at Twin Pines. The debate over impending war in Iraq had reached such heights that the snowmen, like big, cold goslings straight from a hatched egg, had no reason to believe protests on the street were in any way uncommon, and so merely jumped on the bandwagon. Those who had lived in Twin Pines for a long time recalled similar behavior during Vietnam, and many a time had the story also been told of the snowmen’s short-lived attempt to join the civil rights movement.
The impressionable nature of the snowmen, when realized, had once inspired another solution for the problem of their existence. The origin of the snowmen’s rabble-rousing and flat-out depressing behavior seemed to be their knowledge of impending death; therefore, if the nature of the seasons was kept from the snowmen, they would be ignorant of their mortality and at least reasonably pleasant until they died naturally. Ignorance was bliss, the ladies and gentlemen of the Twin Pines town meeting decided. Unfortunately, every time they tried this strategy, the snowmen figured it out. (For beings that in age never advanced past infancy, the snowmen were exceptionally quick on the uptake.) Either a quite gory accident with a microwave or a revelatory viewing of a calendar would clue the snowmen in, and the reaction would be much more riotous than it was when they were told outright.
So that year, the ladies and gentlemen of the town meeting decided that desperate measures had to be taken. Though most members had given up on getting rid of the snowmen altogether, few disagreed that the protesting had to be stopped. Their plan to arrest and to execute offenders had seemed as justified as it was brilliant, until a certain snowman named Jack Frost demanded a lawyer upon arrest. Police Chief Miller, who, spotting Jack on the street, arrested the snowman on charges of obstructing traffic while protesting in a treasonous and illegal manner, was visibly dumbfounded by Jack’s demand. Chief Miller stated later in court that Jack had a “thoroughly rebellious look” in his coal eyes and that “there was no way he could have just been crossing the street,” even though, eyewitnesses said, Jack was carrying no protesting sign. Finally, according to those who had been in court, Chief Miller stated that Jack’s demand for a lawyer proved his intentions to fight the power, because, as he said, “Why else would a snowman demand one—to stay alive?”
The court of Twin Pines had roared with laughter.
Chief Miller told Jack that he wasn’t allowed to do this.
“Do what?” Jack asked with a voice that came out of nothingness. The way that snowmen talked without opening a mouth or even having a mouth at all disturbed Chief Miller and always had. Those coals that imitated a mouth on Jack’s face were curved up in a smile that was very rare for snowmen, from Chief Miller’s experience.
“Demand a lawyer. You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
As Chief Miller shook the snow off his blue police cap and put it snugly back on his head, he realized that, if he was to be honest with himself, he had no answer to that question. Grunting in a manner that he hoped would assert that he, not the snowman, had made this choice, Chief Miller led Jack to the police station. It took him the whole walk to the police station to realize that the jail cells were heated and would accomplish the execution of Jack prematurely. Just as he was wondering whether that would be such a bad thing after all, Jack made exactly the same observation out loud, and foiled any thoughts of disposal Chief Miller may have had. Handcuffing Jack’s wrists to a Christmas decoration, Chief Miller went inside, dealt with the papers, and returned into the cold to lead the snowman to his backyard.
The Millers’ backyard became Jack’s prison cell, for lack of any better options. The ladies and gentlemen of the Twin Pines town meeting kindly persuaded most residents of the community to donate personal heaters, toaster ovens, and hairdryers to line the backyard fence, ensuring that Jack had no possibility of escape. As Chief Miller brought out roll after roll of orange extension cord and began to plug in the heating devices, Jack repeated incessantly that he would not attempt escape. But Chief Miller was determined to keep good watch on Jack, even in spite of Mrs. Miller’s protests that having a snowman in the backyard was too dangerous for their young son. Chief Miller disliked snowmen, and he thought it was about time that one got what he asked for. And so, every day, he sat outside on the deck, clad in a winter coat and holding a cordless hairdryer in his right hand.
Chief Miller had, at best, terse and awkward relations with his prisoner. On the first day, they were both completely silent, making eye contact as little as possible. Jack had picked up quite nicely on the fact that Chief Miller did not particularly like snowmen, so he minded his own business, studying the birds that would land on his arms and trying to catch a snowflake on one of his knobby fingers. Jack was a strange snowman. He seemed to live as though he didn’t know that, come spring, he would die. Not only were his coals incessantly curved in that odd smile, as if he were happy, but Jack was the only snowman Chief Miller had ever met who had bothered even to name himself. Most snowmen concluded, and Chief Miller concurred strongly, that coming up with a name was a waste of time if by spring all it could be was printing in a nonexistent snowman obituary column. This was why such a cliché name as Jack Frost had not already been taken by another snowman. Chief Miller thanked God that the snowman had not dubbed himself Frosty. Imagine arresting and prosecuting someone named Frosty the Snowman! In the courts, Chief Miller could imagine the D.A. would not be able to resist saying “thumpity thump thump” or “look at Frosty go” at some point during the trial.
But the courts seemed to be taking this arrest more seriously than Chief Miller had expected. At least Jack’s lawyer was. When the lawyer met with Jack for the first time, Chief Miller could tell immediately that he was one of those hot-blooded vegetarian lawyers fresh from the bar whose desire to defend the ideals of inalienable rights had yet to be crushed, as they inevitably would. Essentially, Jack was being defended by a man who most likely believed that cutting down a Christmas tree was murder.
On Christmas Eve, about a week after Jack’s arrest, Chief Miller had just committed that very type of “murder” and was dragging back his Christmas tree when an inhuman voice came from the snow. He dropped the tree and swore.
“Is tomorrow Christmas?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Chief Miller said, picking the tree back up and avoiding eye contact.
“Is Santa Claus coming tonight?”
Chief Miller had never considered the fact that Jack might not know that Santa Claus was a myth. He sighed and decided that explaining otherwise to a man made of snow would simply take too long.
“Yes,” he said.
All that night Jack stood, awake—though Chief Miller wasn’t sure whether snowmen slept, in fact—staring at the roof, waiting expectantly for a sleigh to come with reindeer and a fat man laughing, perhaps to take him to the North Pole. The snowman stood among the blowing flakes of snow, arms limp, so still that if Chief Miller stared at him long enough he could convince himself that Jack was just a still, dead snowman whom his son had built and who hadn’t moved since because he had always been dead. But Jack wasn’t an expectant, innocent child who resembled Chief Miller’s own son in an unsettlingly human manner as he waited for Santa Claus. Chief Miller tried to find something in those coals of his face that would make them just coals and nothing more—tried to ignore that hopeful smile that Jack’s fake mouth made and that odd way his eyes never left the roof. Eventually, he gave up and just closed the shades.
The next morning, Chief Miller decided that not even snowmen deserved to think that they weren’t good enough for Santa to come, and so he stepped outside with the burden of breaking the Christmas dream. He had to explain to a snowman who was taller than he was that Santa Claus didn’t exist. Something about it bothered Chief Miller, so he decided not to make eye contact but rather to follow his own breath with his eyes as it spindled into the sky, visible for a moment in the winter air, but then gone. He was rehearsing his lines in his head when Jack spoke first.
“Today isn’t Christmas, is it?” Jack said.
Chief Miller hesitated, not having rehearsed a line that would respond to this question adequately. Of course today was Christmas.
“No, it’s not. It was…delayed,” he said.
“Because Santa Claus didn’t come.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Is tomorrow Christmas?”
“Yes.”
And so the conversation ended. As he sighed in relief, Chief Miller realized what the difference was between Jack and the other snowmen. Why Jack didn’t have that droop in the nose, that slump in the three snowballs that composed his body. Why Jack demanded a lawyer. Jack thought that he could live on—that Santa Claus would take him to the North Pole, where he would live with other snowmen and reindeer and where winter would never end. Chief Miller didn’t have the heart to end that.
The next morning, Chief Miller walked outside and had the same conversation with Jack, reassuring him that Christmas would be tomorrow. This same exchange happened the morning after that, and every morning after that morning. It became a routine that reassured not only Jack, but Chief Miller. Every morning, Chief Miller was able to tell himself that he had done the right thing—given a lesser being hope. But every night he closed his shades, not wanting to watch Jack wait again for something that would never come.
At that point, it had become quite apparent that the courts were going to delay the case until spring, when the case quite simply would become null. The vegetarian lawyer was arguing the delay to the death, attempting to get Jack out of his “prison” before Melting Day. The snowmen, actually having found something real to protest, protested in the streets so often that everyone bought bikes and there was soon no traffic to obstruct. The ladies and gentlemen of the Twin Pines town meeting had given up enforcing the law against protesting, because every time a policeman arrested a snowman, that snowman demanded a lawyer, and the Millers refused to have their backyard used as a massive snowman penitentiary. Jack seemed to turn a blind coal to this, not caring as much as the somber snowmen who idolized him, and really just wanting to live until Santa Claus arrived.
Yet, each morning, Jack seemed not to be disappointed that Santa didn’t come. This disturbed Chief Miller. Jack would accept the fact that Christmas would be the next day, unquestioningly, every morning, and go about his daily business. He’d taken to bird watching—he had a specific advantage in this, being that his arms were an ideal place for the feathered creatures to alight. So Jack would stand there every day, observing closely with coal eyes every movement and feather of each bird: the nightingale on his shoulder, the blue jay on his elbow, the raven perched on his knobbly pinky.
At one point, Chief Miller thought that Jack might as well know what he was talking about and bought him a bird watcher’s handbook and binoculars. When receiving these gifts, Jack was teary-eyed with excitement. Upon further pondering, Chief Miller realized that the days had become a little warmer, barely pushing the melting point, and so those tears, of course, must have only been drops of melted snow. But after a day of looking carefully at the book and trying out the binoculars—it was an odd sight to see a snowman put binoculars up to his coal eyes and see through them, but Chief Miller had got used to odd sights by now—Jack decided that he needed neither gift and gave them back to Chief Miller very thankfully. He explained that the birds already had names: he had given each of them names and was very attached to them. It was actually John Wayne on his shoulder, Fred Flintstone on his elbow, and George Bush perched on his knobbly pinky, Jack corrected him. Jack was, in fact, very attached to the concept of names in general. He would use his name as often as possible during conversation—sounding like Tarzan or the Incredible Hulk or Elmo from Sesame Street—and had named several trees in the yard as well.
Chief Miller did not understand Jack fully until Melting Day. It came in the middle of March in a rather matter-of-fact manner. At least, that was the manner in which it was announced by Jack. After Chief Miller bumped Christmas forward another day on the calendar, Jack sighed—if snowmen could sigh—and said, “Jack Frost sure hopes Christmas is tomorrow.”
“Why?” Chief Miller asked.
“If it isn’t, Jack Frost will miss seeing Santa Claus and Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen—and Rudolph!”
The snowman seemed more dismayed over not meeting the old, fat man and the reindeer than dying. It occurred to Chief Miller that Jack may have never thought about the possibility of immortality on the North Pole. But then, why was he so happy? Why no slump in the snowballs? No Woe Is Me or Doom Is Near signs? It made no sense.
“Tomorrow is Melting Day. Spring is coming. Jack Frost knows because Jack Frost saw Spider-man fly onto his arm yesterday!”
Chief Miller, assuming Jack meant a robin, said the only thing he could think of: “Well, Christmas is tomorrow, so you’ll see them tonight.” He was procrastinating consoling the big hunk of snow, but he had to think of what to say first.
Immediately, Jack perked up and returned to futzing around the yard with all the flying John Waynes and George Bushes and the occasional Spider-man, and had a good time for the whole day. His coals were curved upward in that stupid smile of his, and while Jack enjoyed his day—dripping a little at the edges—Chief Miller was trying to think of something to say to the snowman. Eventually, he gave up and went out for a walk. He couldn’t make it into town square because the snowmen were so busy protesting—their coals in big, over-exaggerated frowns, their spindly arms holding up their prophecies of doom, and their big snowy bodies slumped because they were all too aware of their mortality. Melting Day was tomorrow. Why couldn’t Jack just be like them?
Chief Miller got home at sunset and walked straight to the backyard. He found Jack there, in the twilight, staring at the roof like he had almost every night of his life. Jack was as still as death, his coal eyes fading into the shadows as the little blue that was left in the sky made him the silhouette of three scoops of ice cream. In retrospect, Chief Miller knew he should have gone inside and closed the shades. But he went and stood next to Jack and tried to see the roof through coal eyes, with hope, or whatever kept Jack naming birds and demanding lawyers when he knew he would die.
Eventually, Chief Miller convinced himself that he was just waiting for that moment where Jack realized that Santa wouldn’t come with his reindeer, an icebreaker to start “the talk” that someday, though with much less mortal importance, he would have to have with his son. But as he stared at that roof, he began to hear reindeer hooves going “thumpity thump thump” and the laugh of an old, fat man. He began to see, through his coal eyes, a sleigh bearing a bag stuffed full of things with name tags and tied at the end with a jolly red string that kept the names secret. Perhaps there was even a jingling bell on the string. He could smell the old, fat man’s pipe in the canvas of the overstuffed bag. And he could see Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen and Rudolph—with that nose shining warm as spring. Chief Miller, with his coal eyes, felt frightened by the warmth: Melting Day would come too soon, he would melt and die, and he wouldn’t be able to meet this old, fat man and his flying reindeer. But then he saw the sky and heard a soothing laugh—fat like the old man and his bag—and was flown to the place where winter never ends. There were fields of snow—white everywhere!—like one great sheet of paper on which to write names forever, blemished only by the hoof prints of reindeer. And he stooped down and began to build snowmen, so many snowmen.
As the sun rose over the empty roof, Chief Miller turned to his side and saw that Jack Frost was gone. The snow had yet to melt. A nightingale chirped that it was morning. But there was no death to mourn. It was Christmas morning. He fell to his knees and wept warm tears to the melting snow.
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