Jim Maitland

"I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and nights when I was twelve or twelve days and nights when I was six”. 

So begins Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”. I recall my own Christmases Past similarly - after 75 of them, they blend more than a bit - but one was unique.

Most of my childhood Christmases took place in Northfield Minnesota. I don’t recall endless storms for any of them, but there was always a white blanket on the ground when we celebrated Christ’s birth. “In the Bleak Midwinter” aptly captures that scene (“snow had fallen snow on snow”, “earth hard as iron”) and always brings Northfield to mind when we sing it here in Reading. But the Christmas that stands out for me was distinctive more for the cold than the snow – for the bitter cold, and the ducks.

My parents’ home was on a quiet street on the edge of town about a ten-minute walk up a hill and across a field from a small lake, which usually froze solid enough to safely land a toboggan launched down the hill and off the bank. A flock of ducks called that lake home, and we’d go down to feed them on Christmas break when they usually had but one small patch of open water left for survival. This particular year it was so cold we didn’t feel like going outside ourselves and consequently didn’t think about our feathered friends either.

On Christmas day, after presents, my mother was busy making dinner while I was setting the table. As I clinked and puttered, a strange sound came from outside, growing in volume. At the window, I scanned left and right. Lo and behold, it was the ducks from the lake, pretty much all of them, marching in close formation down the snow-packed street, all quacking vigorously, approaching our house.

I called the family round, and when the ducks were right out front, we opened the door. Immediately, the whole squad made a sharp left turn toward us, came over the curb and up the walk, stopping about ten feet from the house, quacking ALAP*. Only then did we realize the lake must be completely frozen and its inhabitants were very hungry. Mother went for the turkey stuffing bread, and we sacrificed it by the handful into their midst. Rarely do ducks get this happy, if anything quacking louder than before as they ate their fill. Here the memory fades, but the sight and sound live on for me as a close encounter with the natural world on a supernatural day.

I think of that Christmas sometimes during the final verse of Good King Wenceslas when we sing “ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.” On that day the poor we blessed were ducks, not people.

*As loud as possible