The pounding on the door jolted me out of a sound slumber. Between the fragile warmth of a New Mexican winter sun and the background rumble of the heater; early afternoons make me drowsy. The midday sun flooded the family room with golden light, and with my wife’s heavy hand on the thermostat the place felt like a sauna.  My recliner abruptly unclined me to a sitting position as the noise shattered my reverie.

Who the heck was making that racket, I groused? After all, this was the time of day I prized most for solitude. The few remaining birds mute their chatter as they huddle together on the bare branches of our front yard cottonwood, and the click and buzz of insects is no more.  The far off cry of a coyote overlays the more common sounds of dissolute traffic and the wind-sown ticking of branch against branch. Yet this raucous sound had invaded my very dreams.

Muttering under my breath, I went from the family room to the front door and yanked it open, hoping it would startle my inconsiderate visitor into full flight. But there was Gerda looking for all the world like a refugee from a war torn land. Her hair disheveled and her coat oddly buttoned, I was instantly alert and worried.

“Come in out of the cold, Gerda.” A blast of arctic air followed in her wake as she shuffled in.

“I don’t mean to disturb you, Robert,” she said, looking up at me imploringly.

“No problem.” All irritation was gone now as I assessed her appearance. Her wool skirt was slightly askew under the heavy winter coat. As I’d first observed, the buttons and buttonholes were mismatched. All the signs of haste, and Gerda was usually conscientious in her dress. Her normally bright cherubic face was dark with worry and she had chewed her lip until she drew blood. She undid the jumbled buttons of her coat and handed it to me, and then straightened her bulky green sweater before I led her into the den, a hand behind her back to guide her.

“Would you like some tea? I can brew a fresh pot.”

“No, thank you.”

She looked around the room as if her next response would awaken old ghosts. The marble fireplace, gilt-framed pictures and overstuffed chairs began to have a calming effect on her as my own anxiety rose. I held my breath waiting for Gerda to speak.

“Max didn’t come home last night.”

Her words were more startling than the pounding on the door. We exchanged looks and the fear I saw there chilled me. “That’s not like Max,” I said as though it wasn’t already painfully apparent to her.

“No calls, no note, no… Max.” A tight sob escaped and shook her round body.  Middle age had settled gently upon her features, only the worry lines of her face had betrayed her age. Until now. Now she seemed decades older and I quickly held both her outstretched hands to support her as she tottered in despair.

“Did you call the police yet?” But that was something Gerda would never do. She would seek my advice first. I knew that without asking so I set about trying to solve her dilemma. “It’s probably too soon for them to take any action unless there was a suspicious event preceding his disappearance.” I waited a second until she looked up. “Did anything happen yesterday?”

“No, we were just fine…just”

I waited while the troubled frown deepened and then asked again. “Gerda?”

“He did seem most unhappy last night, Robert.” She put a hand to her mouth and slowly shook her lowered head. “But he wouldn’t do anything foolish, would he?”

Her eyes implored me to lie, but I couldn’t say the words. Max did foolish things; that was his problem. “Did he say anything that would help us find him? You already called the shop, I assume?”

“Och, ya. I called and called,” Gerda said. Unlike Max, her accent was still obvious.  The leavening of seven years in Lincoln County wasn’t long enough.  Max on the other hand had grown up here, and he often had a pained look on his face when she spoke.

After we’d exhausted all the possibilities of where Max could be I returned to the motive behind his disappearance. I knew he’d changed after his father’s death late last year. In fact, it occurred to me that we were fast coming up on the anniversary of his death. “Is Max still depressed about his father’s death?”

“He doesn’t speak about it, but ya, it does pain him.” She suddenly looked up, mouth open as she realized where I was leading her. “It is almost a year since…”

A knuckle went into her mouth, and her teeth clamped down on it. Somehow I was going to have to calm her down before she chewed herself bloodless. What we needed was movement. “Why don’t we go down to the shop? He might have left a note there, or maybe left a clue for us to follow up on.” The call to action seemed to relieve her and she paced back and forth while I ran to get my coat.

In the hallway, the furious pounding on the front door caused me to drop the coat.  Now what?  I opened the door on a very cold looking Max, kicking snow off his boots.  He craned his neck around the doorway and said, “Is Gerda here?”

“Yes, she was worried about you,” I said.

He made a dismissive wave of his hand before entering, heading toward the living room. As he stepped down into the den, Gerda rushed up to him.

“Max!”

He stopped short as she reached up and hugged him tightly. Looking uncomfortable, Max gently removed her arms from his shoulders.

“Now, now, Momma, I’m fine.”

“Where were you?” Gerda’s voice betrayed her fear and anger.

“I was at the shop,” he said. “I was too tired and stayed there last night.”

“Why didn’t you answer the phone?” Gerda was still upset, wringing her hands and looking imploringly at her husband.

“I was on the roof. I didn’t hear the phone.”

Her hands went to her face as if to hold back the fear spreading outward from her mouth. “Oh, Max!”

Max glanced at me, a look of unease and guilt betraying his next words. “We shouldn’t be disturbing Robert, Gerda.” He shoved her toward the hallway.

“Max, I think you should stay a bit,” I said.

“Hello, Max, Gerda,” said my wife as she came down the stairs. “Please stay. I’ll fix us some tea.”

Catherine winked as she passed me on her way to the kitchen, and I blew a kiss of appreciation. Max was lead, grudgingly; into the den by his concerned wife, sighing all the way and pleading he didn’t want to be a bother.

Max Rembrandt grabbed my overstuffed chair before I could get to it, so I went over to stoke the fire while I prepared myself for what was to come. When I turned back there was Max with his sad gray eyes. His blonde hair spiked when he removed his red stocking cap, the same one he wore every winter the five years I’d known him.  Max’s static electricity-charged hair only underscored the pain on his face. I steeled myself for what looked to be a long afternoon.

I almost opened with a how are you, but I knew what deadly ground that would uncover so instead I tried the weather. Fortunately, it didn’t matter; Max steered the conversation to his own pain anyway.

“Lousy weather today,” he began. “Too cold. It was a day like this that killed my papa.”

“I didn’t realize your father had died from exposure, Max.”

“No,” Max said, shaking his head, “it was that damned contraption.” Anger was turning his face redder than his cap.

This I had not heard before and I was instantly curious. I knew that his father had died of a stroke — almost a year ago — but I had not heard the details and now was hungry for them. A curse of writers I’ve been told. “What contraption is that, Max?”

Pain and foreboding darkened Gerda’s normally sunny face and I was almost sorry for asking.

“It was that Christmas mobile display killed him, you want to know the truth.” He wrapped his arms around himself, not from the cold, as the room was both warm and cheery.

Catherine had already put up stage one of our Christmas decorations, which included pine-scented potpourri, her winter photographs, and two large planters of Poinsettias.  The gilt-edged books peeking out from the bookcases at either end of the fireplace completed the theme of green, red, and gold. Max’s sour face seemed to leach the colors out of the corner in which he slumped, so my wife brought him a steaming cup of tea and a tray of biscuits, and his face brightened.  As she heaped treats on him, making sure both hands were full, I had the impression she was decorating him as well, so that he better complemented her room

“What display is that?” I said, accepting my own cup. Afternoon tea seemed to make any conversation more palatable.

“The one on top of my store.” When he noticed my look of confusion he explained.  “Johann, that was my papa’s name, built a Christmas display up there. It had a motorized sled with a Santa Claus in it, built many years before Gerda arrived.”  He turned toward his wife. “Johann told you all about it though, didn’t he?”

His wife looked at him over her teacup and made slurping sounds before replying.  “Almost thirty years ago wasn’t it? When you were a boy?” She was thoughtful for a moment, setting her tea down and dabbing her lips with a napkin. “It must have been that long ago. Didn’t he always say how proud he was of his son working on it with him?”  She looked over at Max for confirmation, but he just shrugged. She continued to look at him with concern as she filled in more details. “It has been a long time since it ran, of course. I think it became too expensive to run.”

“No.” The one word denial hung heavy in the room. Max looked at each of us in turn.  “No, it broke down and we didn’t have the parts to fix it. Besides, nobody wanted to see it anymore so what was the point?”

I didn’t know what the point was, but my instincts told me it was the source of Max’s depression. Gerda steered the conversation to other subjects, the annual Christmas Festival of Lights, the lighting of the tree, but Max became even more withdrawn until finally he found an excuse to leave on a personal errand, leaving his wife with the good-byes.

I turned to Gerda. “What’s going on? This is the worst I’ve ever seen Max.” And that’s saying something, I silently added.

“Och, trouble is all he gives me that man. But this season, almost a year since his papa’s death, is very bad.”

“How did his father die, Gerda? Max never said exactly.”

“Robert, maybe we shouldn’t probe into personal matters,” Catherine said. She’d been quiet until now; in part because she always had trouble with depression. Her own family had always kept things bottled inside and it often took all my urging to get her to unburden herself.

“No, no, it’s alright,” Gerda said, waving a placating hand in Catherine’s direction. “I must talk to someone about this.”

She turned to me and those eyes, sad like Max’s, were still full of hope. Maybe her hope was that someone could help, and now I really wanted to, because I felt I was loosing Max. In a small town like Ruidoso, you didn’t have that many good friends.  “Please tell us. We’d like to know. His father’s death still weights heavily on him, doesn’t it?”

“Ya, very heavy indeed. Should I tell you how he died?” When we both tentatively nodded, she began. As I listened, her chubby hands began weaving the fabric of her story and she became more animated. “It was a year ago this month, just after Thanksgiving, that Johann announced he was going to repair the display. Max was against it from the beginning. He said it was too dangerous for his father to be up on the roof fiddling with the gears and pulleys that made it run. It was a cold November, and the roof had a thick crust of snow on it. Johann tried to get Max to go up with him, but he refused.

“So Johann went up on the roof and later brought down some gears with broken teeth.” She formed a circle with her thumbs and index fingers to indicate the approximate size of the gears, as though that would have made any sense to me. “Max was upset that Johann had gone up there, but agreed to look in the catalog for replacement parts.  Unfortunately nobody was making that style of gear anymore. Custom-made ones are very expensive, you know, so Max told him to forget it.

“His father had refused to come live with us and stayed in the rooms above the store he’d occupied after his wife died.” She put a finger to chin and thoughtfully gazed up before continuing. “That was almost a year ago. How do you say, time flees?” She smiled and blushed before going on. “That last night Johann and Max said little to each other after their argument and we finally left him at the shop an hour after closing. It snowed that night, the temperature dropped to ten degrees, and we were late getting back to the store the next day. Max said it would give Johann another excuse to yell at him.”

She paused to brush away a tear and blow her nose. “But we couldn’t find Johann anywhere in the store or in the rooms. Max was frantic, calling the police, asking all the merchants on our street, but no one had seen him. Not even at the Cornerstone Bakery where he had his customary Danish and coffee. It was later in the day, with the wind swirling over the tree tops that we saw him.” She looked at us, tears welling from her eyes, her chin quivering. “Excuse me a moment.”

She pulled a large hanky out of her purse and dabbed uselessly at her eyes. Issuing a loud sigh that shook her body, she went on. “He was frozen to the sled, one arm around the Santa Claus, the other on a wrench clamped on the sled. He’d had a second stroke the doctors told me later. His first had been three years before while he was trying to repair the sled the first time.”

“My God, no wonder Max was damning the thing,” I said. I had been to Max’s shop before, and remembered his gnomish father, bent over some mechanical device, always tinkering. I imagined him bent over the sled, frozen in time; ice forming over beetled brow, icicles drooping from outstretched hand. What a horror for Max to see! I had only seen a formless tarp covering something on the roof from my first visit at his shop many years before.  Never realizing what it covered until now. “So what was the display exactly, a Santa and sled? Did it have reindeer?”

Gerda was nodding. “Ya, Max called it Johann’s Folly whenever anyone asked why it no longer worked. He kept it covered all the time except last year when Johann tried to fix it. It has two pair of reindeer and Sinter Klaus, excuse me, Santa Claus in a big sled with presents piled inside. The sled would make a circuit of the roof – the platform was tilted so everyone could see – – and the reindeer would nod their heads, Santa would wave his arm and turn his head, and lights came on. Oh it was a wonderful thing to see.  Johann’s father was a famous watchmaker in Amsterdam. Did I mention that before?”

She hadn’t but it made sense. In fact, many things were beginning to make sense.  “And you say Max and his father worked on it together?”

“Ya, for two years they worked. I still have pictures of them up on the roof smiling into the camera, their arms around one another.” Her face briefly lit up as she remembered what she evoked for us in her descriptions.

“What changed? That sounds like a wonderful thing for a father and son to do.” I was thinking of my own son and the times we fished or rode bikes together, but never a big project like the Rembrandt Christmas display.

“As you know, we sell many hand-crafted toys. These days with all the video games and computer toys it is hard to compete. Max wanted to make computer-controlled toys.  Still done by hand, but with…” She waved her arms aimlessly in a futile attempt to describe what she did not understand herself.

“I imagine that didn’t go over big with Johann.”

“He was furious, he thought Max had, how you say, outsold him?” She leaned forward in her chair as her story again moved forward. “They ended up working at opposite ends of the shop, and when the display stopped working, Max told Johann to fix it himself.” She took a deep breath, gathering her shawl around her shoulders. “I had just started working in the shop then. Johann was on up the roof, banging away, and Max was pretending he didn’t hear it when suddenly the banging stopped and we heard Johann cry out Max’s name.”

She gazed up at the crackling fire before going on, perhaps drawing sustenance from its heat. “Johann was lying on the ground besides the sled, still holding a big wrench, but such pain I saw on his face. Max doesn’t cry, not so long as I’ve known him, but this time he cried so hard I couldn’t bear to look. When his father had partially recovered, I hoped they would become close again, but Johann blamed him. ‘You’ve betrayed me,’ he’d say over and over again until Max would leave the room.

“Eventually, they arrived at some kind of truce, but I swear the accusation was always in Johann’s eyes.” She shook her head sadly from side to side before gazing up at us. “So now you know.”

During her narration an idea began forming, and now that she had finished her tale I almost had it. “I remember the funeral, Gerda. His two brothers and sister didn’t give him much support. Did they blame him as well?”

“Yes, it was terrible. I tried to tell them Johann was just being his stubborn Dutchman self, which he did very well, I might add. But Johann had complained and they knew the story of the rooftop display. Seen through their father’s eyes, of course.”

I knew from past years that the entire family traditionally came to southern New Mexico for Christmas and vaguely recalled their faces. Hardy stock, all of them tall and well built like Max, all sandy-haired and red-cheeked, laughing and making merry.  Hesitantly, I asked the question to which I didn’t want an answer. “Is his family coming down for Christmas?”

She dropped her face into her hands and cried softly. Catherine went over to comfort her while I tried to keep my own tears at bay. “If only I could have given him children.  He so much wanted them.”

Catherine had been gently rubbing her back, but now she straightened up and said, “Children, what about children?”

“It would have given Max someone to teach his skills to, and live through. Especially on the holidays.”

That was the final piece I wasn’t clear about.  Now I prayed my idea would work.  “Gerda, I’ve got an idea how we can help Max out of his depression. Would you like to hear it?” When she nodded vigorously, I pulled my chair near her and laid it out. Then the three of us conspired, listing all Max’s possible objections, and decided on lunch the following day to tell him.

* * *

My son, Robbie, helped getting lunch ready. Our country kitchen was large enough to include a breakfast area encircled by windows. It was our usual place to dine, have family meetings, and read together. The sun glittered over the icy snow, almost blinding to the eye. I drew the lace curtain half closed, but Catherine opened them again. “We need all the light we can get,” she said before checking her soufflé in the oven. She’d also made Robbie’s favorite; Welsh Rarebit, and he made loud smacking sounds when she set it by his place. He smiled at me across the table and gave the thumbs up sign. Robbie loved his Uncle Max so I was counting on him playing his part. As the last chair was slid into place the Rembrandts arrived.

As soon as the first course had been consumed I started the ball rolling by mentioning the contest the Chamber of Commerce was holding for the best Christmas display, and how we needed an idea to spark us. At first Max feigned a lack of interest, but his love of Christmas defeated him and eventually he came up with some imaginative ideas. Finally I said, “Max, what are you planning for Christmas.” It took him by surprise and he scratched his head while he thought.

“I don’t know. The usual lights, maybe try those new icicle lights, Mama?”

“The computer controlled ones,” I asked.

He acted like he’d bitten into a high voltage wire. “What? Oh, yes, I suppose they are.  Hmm.”

“Uncle Max, why don’t you get your rooftop Santa running again?” I’d clued Robbie in and hoped he remembered what to say when Max asked how he knew about it.

Sure enough, Max looked strangely at Robbie, then at Catherine and me, all wearing innocent smiles, before turning back to Robbie. “How did you know about that?” There was a hint of anger in his voice and Robbie backed up a little before replying.

“Uh, my buddy Alex. His Dad has a cool video of it that he showed us. Is it really as big as it looked on the TV?”

Poor Max, he was half upset at being exposed and half-proud of what he and his Dad had built. “It is pretty big, Robbie, but it’s too old to run now. Besides, no one cares about old mechanical gadgets.” Passionately, he waved his arms. “They all want lasers and computer graphics and all that stuff. I can’t compete with dinosaurs and space ships.”

“Sure you can Uncle Max. Kids are tired of the same old stuff. I’ll bet they’d love to see the real thing for a change.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but Robbie, God bless him could fib with the best of them for a good cause.

“Well, I don’t know,” Max said, while he slowly rubbed his jaw.

Now it was my turn. “You know, Robbie may just have something, Max. The classic dioramas and animated dolls and things seem to be making a real comeback. And what would Christmas be without traditions?”

“Yeah, but it would cost a pretty penny to get that thing running again. And for what?”

“For the children, Max,” I said softly. “The child in all of us.” And maybe you’d also get closure with your Dad, I thought, but didn’t voice. He jerked his head in my direction as though he’d read my thoughts. Had I overplayed my hand? I hastily added, “I’ll bet Robbie and I could even help out. It could be a project both families worked on together.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Tell you what, Max,” I said, playing my down card. “I’ll even split the cost with you. I’ve always wanted to make something like it when I was a kid. I might even be able to get you coverage in the Observer. Just think of all the free publicity.” Max was really working on his jaw now. I could even hear the sandpapery sound of his unshaven skin, but then he looked up.

“What do you mean? An ad?”

“Not exactly.” Here goes I told myself. “How long ago did your dad start running the display?”

He stopped stroking his face and looked around the table at our expectant faces.  “Why?”

“Humor me, Max, how long.”

“I guess about twenty five, no twenty seven years ago.”

Doing a quick calculation, I said, “So the display had been running for over twenty years. I think it’s safe to say it had become a Ruidoso tradition at Christmas.” When he nodded I continued. “Don’t you think the son carrying on his father’s tradition would be big news in this town?”

His mouth dropped open and his chin trembled on the cusp of a sob before he recovered. Straightening, he took a deep breath before answering. “So you want me to go up on the roof so you can sell a story?”

“Max,” Gerda said disappointment in her voice, “that’s not what Robert is saying.”

“What I’m saying, Max, is I’ll bet I could place a story about the rebirth of a Christmas tradition that will have people coming to your store from miles around. To see the display, but also to see the wonderful toys you make. And it would have much greater impact than an advertisement.” Max was becoming interested in spite of himself as I continued. “Remember, the paper’s circulation covers most of the county and most of your potential customers.”

“Well.” He put his hands on his knees. “I’ll think about it.”

“Wow, that’d be super, Uncle Max.” Robbie really did seem excited at the prospect.  As for me, two left hands Machan, I was just hoping I didn’t add complications to the task Max had before him. I sensed that he really wanted to be convinced though. Maybe Gerda had worked on him some before he arrived. She was all smiles, her eyes glistening as she held onto his arm.

“Papa, it would be so good for all of us. Let’s do it.”

Max sighed and looked off into the distance. The sun streaming in through the kitchen exposed the trail of tears he’d been unable to check. He nodded his head, slowly at first, then more vigorously. “OK, I’ll do it.”

* * *

The first week in December passed quickly. All five of us became involved in getting the display running again. Whenever Max’s enthusiasm would flag, we’d be right there to support him. I was surprised to find I was a pretty good hand as a mechanic and we soon had the major part of the display in working order, but we were still waiting anxiously for the main drive gears coming in from Albuquerque.

I’d sold the idea as a series of articles and had already done three. The first two covered the history of Johann’s display – A Rembrandt Christmas Mobile; I’d called it – touching briefly on his artisan background. The Observer was eager for the next one; the city editor had even confided that their circulation had picked up since the second one had appeared. The third in the series covered the ongoing effort to get the display running again, recounting the difficulty in replacing old parts no longer carried in the catalogs and Max’s inspired reworking of the display as he found ways around each potential roadblock. But we still needed those main drive gears and I was getting really frustrated with the parts man at Albuquerque Gear and Pulley.

Max and I were on the roof, the wind picking up and lifting the flaps of my schapska.  “I’m sorry Max; they still won’t give me a delivery date.”

“But the whole drive mechanism requires those gears.” His free arm swept the roof, taking in the tracks on which the sled and reindeer circuited the roof on the elevated platform.

I scratched through my cap as he went over and shook the pickup stud protruding through the center of the track. Under the platform the stud was fastened to a large spoked wheel driven by a series of gears then to an electric motor. The new motor I’d purchased was more powerful than the original and designed for harsh winters. But without those gears, it would never turn and the sled would be motionless on its track.

From where he squatted, Max looked up at me. “If the sled doesn’t move then neither will the wheels.” He pointed to the set of wheels that connected the sled to the track, much like train wheels, which, in fact, they originally were. “And if the wheels don’t move,” he threw his hands up in despair, “neither does Santa.”

He’d explained the complicated set of gears, pulleys, and chains that ran off the wheels to drive all the animated parts of Santa and his reindeer. It was like looking into the workings of a clock tower, like the ones I’d seen in Germany when I was in the army.  I still remember the gaily dressed figures, dancing out of one door, pirouetting around the clock’s face and saluting the town folk down below, before disappearing behind another wooden portal.

“Maybe you should shove one of your articles in their face and tell them what’s at stake.”  His face was stern for a moment, and then it softened. “My Papa would have been proud of what you wrote about him, Robert. I’d almost forgotten the wonderful times we’d spent up here on this roof.” He voice caught on this and he quickly looked away.

“Sometimes we forget things when more recent pain overlays them, Max. You can’t undo the past, but you can build a new tradition. Heck, you already have. Look what you’ve accomplished, and with the world’s worst mechanic helping you, too.”

Max slowly stood and look over the display, once again looking new and glistening in the morning sun, then at me still holding a big crescent wrench. “It’s a great idea, Max.  I’ll bet they haven’t seen the articles yet. Otherwise, we’d already have this thing running.”

Now he had a big grin on his face. “Even with the world’s worst mechanic helping?”

We walked over to the rooftop stair housing, laughing and hugging each other.

* * *

The sonorous rasp of a coronet solo signaled the beginning of the tree lighting ceremony. The thirty-foot Noble pine spread majestically out from the town square. Its lowest branches probed part way onto Sudderth Drive, illuminating the tire-flattened snow. The pattern of numerous tire treads seemed to move in the flashing lights. The excited squeals of the children mixed with the cautionary tones of adult warnings.  Snatches of impromptu Christmas carols had preceded the concert, but now everyone joined in as the band struck up.

As I sang, I kept an eye on Max. His earnest baritone blended well with Gerda’s sturdy soprano, his arm around her back. Occasionally he would glance over his shoulder at me, smile, and then look beyond me to the parking lot. I knew what he was waiting for and prayed that his family would arrive. I’d spoken to them urging their participation, but in truth it was the articles I’d mailed them that I hoped would convince them to come.

After the tree lighting, our two families were hoping many of the celebrants would come down the four blocks to Max’s store, which was set back from the road and partially hidden by the western wear shop. We’d prepared hot chocolate, coffee, and heaping plates of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies to reward them. But where were Frederick, Wilhelm, and Katrina?

As the applause abated, I gathered Catherine and Robbie and signaled to Max that we were heading down to the shop. Once more he checked the parking lot, and then sadly nodded to indicate he would join us. I couldn’t help glancing back to see if anyone else was following us. Then one by one people broke off from the main group, bent down to whisper to their children, and then hand in hand joined our growing group.

As we made our way down the brightly lit streets, snow crunching underfoot, a few people whistled or hummed carols until by some magical consensus they all settled for “Deck the Halls” as we came up to the store. Max nervously shifted from foot to foot as the crowd gathered.

“I hope everything works,” he said nervously, his hands tucked under his armpits.

I clapped him on the back to reassure him and went inside to bring out the power cable that terminated in a big industrial switch box. The round metal buttons gleamed in the store’s lights. All the lights were on inside, only the roof was dark. “Hey, it worked fine this morning,” I told Max. “It’ll be even better now.”

Max looked down at the switch in his hand, then over to his wife, a pleading look on his face. Suddenly he looked up and the biggest smile I’d ever seen widened on his face.

“Max, Max, I’m sorry, we got held up in traffic.”

A tall figure, a younger version of Max, emerged from the crowd, coming into the halo of light thrown out by the store. Frederick and Max embraced, joined by Katrina in a fur coat and Wilhelm in gray topcoat.

“I thought maybe none of you were coming, Kat,” Max said to his sister.

“And miss this wonderful tribute you pay our father?” His sister touched his face and smiled. “Never!”

“Remember Max, you don’t cry,” Robbie said to him in a whisper.

Max pulled Robbie’s cap down over his ears before wiping his arm over his eyes.  Gerda came over to him and pointed to the switch box. “It’s time Max.”

Robbie was in front of me and I pulled him to me, wrapping my arms around his chest. “Do it Max.”

A look of panic played across his face and he turned to Gerda. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will Max,” his wife said. “We will do it together.” She looked up at him, eyes sparkling, “For the children.”

“For the children,” he replied as they pushed the button.

At first nothing happened and the entire crowd held its collective breath. We all heard the whirring sound of gears straining under tremendous weight, while the lights feebly winked on. The sled shook in place for a moment while I mentally went over every last item of our checklist. What did we miss?

Suddenly there was the sound of ice breaking and the sled began to move. Slowly at first, then steadily as the rest of the ice broke free, and I silently congratulated myself for suggesting the new motor. To the applause below, the display made its first majestic circuit of the night. Santa waved to the people who cheered him on his rounds, while the reindeer threw back their heads in joy. Once more they could probe the sky, spying out the next chimney. And all through the crowd, children’s eyes glowed as they watched the magic up on Max’s rooftop.