Christmas, Pending

Christmas, Pending

Christmas arrived in Bellweather on the fourteenth of March, fifty two years late and in a foul mood.

It began by firing a fruitcake through the council printer.

Midge Lark was alone in the records office when the machine made a choking noise, flashed PAPER JAM, and launched something dark and heavy onto her desk.

The fruitcake landed on the rates notices with enough force to flatten a stapler.

Midge stared at it.

The cake was wrapped in yellowed newspaper and tied with faded red ribbon. A silver label hung from the bow.

BELLWEATHER CHRISTMAS COMMITTEE

25 DECEMBER 1974

Midge poked it with a ruler.

The fruitcake poked back.

She withdrew the ruler.

“No,” she told it firmly. “It is March.”

Outside, the temperature had already reached thirty-nine degrees. Cicadas screamed from the gums. Across the road, Bellweather Hardware was advertising half price pool chemicals beneath a cardboard Easter bunny whose face had melted against the window.

Christmas had no business being anywhere near the place.

The printer chimed.

RESUME SEASONAL EVENT?

Midge pressed CANCEL.

The lights went out.

From somewhere inside the walls, a children’s choir began singing Silent Night.

Midge picked up the phone.

“Colin,” she said when the mayor answered, “Christmas is in the printer.”

There was a pause.

“Is that a technical term?”

“No.”

“Have you turned it off and on again?”

“I am not turning Christmas back on.”

By nine o’clock, the problem had spread.

Tinsel appeared on every parking meter in Main Street. Six reindeer materialised on the roof of the chemist, although closer inspection revealed that three were goats and one was the bronze statue of Councillor Dennis Bell wearing antlers.

At the bakery, hot cross buns began screaming whenever anyone tried to buy them.

Mrs Phipps found a fully decorated pine tree growing through the floor of her bathroom. The star had punched a neat hole through the ceiling. She rang council to complain about structural damage and demanded to know whether the tree required a permit.

At Bellweather State School, every child received a present addressed in handwriting belonging to someone who had not written anything in years.

Some were from grandparents. Some were from parents. One was from a Labrador named Kevin.

Kevin’s gift contained a tennis ball and a card that read:

SORRY ABOUT THE COUCH.

NO REGRETS.

By ten, the whole town smelled of roast pork, hot dust and administrative panic.

Mayor Colin Brindle called an emergency meeting.

He arrived at council wearing a plastic wreath around his neck.

“I did not put this on,” he said before anyone could ask.

The wreath had tiny bells that jingled whenever he moved his head. Colin was a small, serious man whose eyebrows looked as though they had been appointed by separate committees.

“This must stop,” he said. “The regional television crew will be here at two for the Mango and Machinery Festival launch.”

From the ceiling came a loud ho ho ho.

Colin looked up.

A pair of black boots dangled briefly from an air vent, then vanished.

“We cannot have seasonal confusion during a tourism announcement,” he continued. “People expect mangoes and tractors. They do not expect Santa emerging from municipal ventilation.”

“Perhaps he is mechanically minded,” said Councillor Bev Shaw.

“This is not funny, Bev.”

The wreath jingled.

Midge placed the fruitcake on the meeting table.

Everyone leaned away from it.

“I think it belongs to Christmas 1974,” she said.

The room fell silent.

People in Bellweather did not speak much about Christmas 1974.

That was the year the river rose five metres in a single night. By Christmas Eve, water had swallowed the caravan park, the cricket oval and half of Railway Street. Families slept in the school hall. Presents floated out of houses. A cow spent three days on the pub veranda and developed a taste for rum.

Four people died.

One of them was Midge’s father.

Arthur Lark had taken his tinny out in the dark to reach a family stranded on a roof. He brought back the mother, two children and their blue cattle dog.

Then he went out again.

The boat returned without him.

Midge had been twelve years old.

She still remembered waiting in the school hall with hundreds of wet, frightened people while the Christmas decorations sagged from the walls. Someone had tried to lead a carol. No one made it past the first verse.

At midnight, the old mayor climbed onto a chair and announced that Christmas was postponed.

Everyone had cheered.

It seemed easier than admitting it had been lost.

Colin cleared his throat.

“That was a figure of speech.”

“The printer disagrees,” said Midge.

As if summoned, the machine started up in the next room.

Sheets of paper shot beneath the door.

Bev picked one up.

It was a child’s drawing of Santa being rescued from a flooded chimney by two firefighters and a duck.

At the bottom, in purple crayon, someone had written:

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING.

Midge went to the archive room.

Bellweather’s council records lived in forty seven grey boxes, nine filing cabinets and one biscuit tin marked IMPORTANT, which contained nothing but takeaway menus from businesses that had closed before the invention of mobile phones.

Midge found the 1974 minute book beneath a folder titled Unresolved Poultry Matters.

The leather cover was swollen from floodwater. Several pages had fused together, but the minutes from Christmas Eve remained perfectly legible.

She carried the book into the meeting room and read aloud.

“Emergency Motion Six. In light of the current flood and the inability of residents to assemble safely, Christmas Day is hereby postponed until the Bellweather River falls below the eleven foot marker. All celebrations, meals, gifts and associated seasonal obligations are to be held until further notice.”

Colin frowned.

“You cannot hold a meal for fifty two years.”

The fruitcake shuddered.

“Apparently you can,” said Midge.

Bev looked out the window. “When did the river fall below the marker?”

“It didn’t. Not officially. The gauge was damaged in the flood. Then the dam was built, and the water covered the old marker.”

“And now?”

“Council dredged that section yesterday.”

Everyone looked at Colin.

He adjusted his wreath.

“It was necessary maintenance.”

“You uncovered the marker,” Midge said.

A crash sounded outside.

The councillors rushed to the window.

Every ute in the council car park now had a red nose attached to its grille.

Colin’s ute also had a tail.

“We ignore it,” he said.

Midge stared at him. “Ignore Christmas?”

“It is an unauthorised event.”

At eleven thirty, the town’s sprinklers began spraying custard.

At twelve, mistletoe grew over every doorway, trapping strangers in awkward social negotiations.

At twelve fifteen, all mobile phones started playing Jingle Bells. Turning them off only made them louder.

By one, wrapped parcels were dropping from the sky.

They fell gently, but with purpose.

Mr Donnelly received the cricket bat his parents had hidden in 1974 and never found after the flood.

Eighty year old Beryl Knox received a yellow dress in a child’s size eight. She held it against herself and laughed until she cried.

The publican received six cartons of beer bearing a brand discontinued in 1989. He declared the situation a miracle and began charging five dollars a glass.

Midge received nothing.

She told herself she was relieved.

At one thirty, the regional television crew arrived to find Main Street covered in tinsel, the mayor arguing with a goat, and Councillor Dennis Bell’s statue positioned at the front of a sleigh.

The reporter lifted her microphone.

“Mayor Brindle, can you explain what is happening?”

Colin looked at the cameras.

Then he looked at the fruitcake, which had followed him from council by rolling along the footpath.

“Bellweather,” he announced, “is hosting Queensland’s first March Christmas Experience.”

Midge shut her eyes.

“Visitors can enjoy a unique celebration of history, resilience and seasonal flexibility.”

The goat ate his wreath.

By three o’clock, two thousand people had arrived.

Someone set up a sausage sizzle. The school choir learned three carols and a surprisingly aggressive version of Six White Boomers. Children swam in the town pool wearing Santa hats. The CWA served fifty two year old fruitcake after determining that it was no more dangerous than their usual one.

Yet the strange Christmas continued to build.

Bells rang from buildings that had no bells.

Lights appeared in trees.

The air shimmered with scraps of old conversations.

People heard names called by voices they remembered.

At four, Midge returned to the minute book.

There was writing on the final page that had not been there before.

The ink glistened.

SEASONAL EVENT INCOMPLETE.

Beneath it was a list.

Residents assembled.

Meal shared.

Carols sung.

Gifts delivered.

Christmas declaration outstanding.

“That is easy,” Colin said. “I will declare it finished.”

He climbed onto the war memorial with a megaphone.

“I, Mayor Colin Brindle, hereby declare Christmas 1974 complete.”

Nothing happened.

A string of lights wound itself around his ankles and hung him upside down.

The crowd applauded.

Midge studied the minute book again.

A final line appeared.

ONE GIFT REMAINS UNDELIVERED.

Somewhere above them, thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.

A parcel drifted down.

It was small, square and wrapped in paper printed with tiny robins. The red had faded to brown. The sticky tape was brittle.

Midge knew the handwriting before the parcel reached her hands.

TO MIDGE

FROM DAD

The town disappeared around her.

She was twelve again, sitting on a camp stretcher in the school hall, listening for a boat engine that never came.

She remembered her father leaving through the rain.

She remembered being angry with him.

He had promised to be back before Christmas lunch.

For fifty two years, some part of her had remained on that stretcher, waiting for him to keep his word.

“I don’t want to open it,” she said.

The crowd had gone quiet.

Colin, now freed from the lights, stepped beside her.

For once, he did not sound like a council notice.

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, she does,” said a little girl near the front.

Her mother gasped. “Georgie!”

“What? It’s holding up Christmas.”

A few people laughed.

Midge looked at the parcel.

Georgie shuffled closer.

“My pop died,” she said. “Mum kept his last birthday card in a drawer because she was scared she would use up his handwriting.”

Her mother’s face went scarlet.

Georgie continued. “But you can’t use up someone’s handwriting. That would be silly.”

Midge ran one finger across her father’s name.

“No,” she said. “You can’t.”

She peeled back the paper.

Inside was a red instant camera.

Midge stared at it.

She had begged for one all through 1974. She wanted to photograph everything. Birds. Storm clouds. Neighbours behaving suspiciously.

Her father used to say she noticed the things other people walked past.

A folded note lay beneath the camera.

For my Midge,

because someone has to keep the evidence.

Love, Dad.

Midge pressed the camera to her chest.

“Well?” Georgie asked.

“Well what?”

“Take a photo.”

Everyone crowded together.

The mayor stood in front, grass in his hair and half a wreath around his neck. Beryl wore the yellow dress as a scarf. Mr Donnelly held his cricket bat. The publican raised a glass of ancient beer. Children, grandparents, dogs, firefighters, farmers and three confused goats squeezed into the frame.

Midge lifted the camera.

For one second, she thought she felt her father’s hand rest between her shoulders.

“Everybody say terrible timing.”

“Terrible timing!”

The flash filled the street.

Every Christmas light went out.

The bells stopped.

The custard sprinklers returned to water.

The sleigh became Councillor Bell’s statue again and crashed through the chemist awning.

March settled over Bellweather as if nothing had happened.

The photograph slid from the camera.

Slowly, colours formed.

There was the crowd, sunburnt and grinning.

At the back stood a man in a raincoat.

Arthur Lark was younger than Midge remembered and exactly as she remembered. One hand rested on her shoulder. With the other, he was holding two fingers behind Mayor Brindle’s head.

Midge laughed so hard she had to sit down.

The following morning, she entered an additional motion into the council register.

Christmas 1974 concluded at 5:17 pm on 14 March 2026.

Weather: Appalling.

Attendance: Everybody.

After a moment, she added:

All future Christmases are to occur in December, subject to common sense and river conditions.

She closed the register.

The council printer chimed.

Midge looked at the screen.

INSTALLING EASTER 1981.

PLEASE DO NOT TURN OFF.

From inside the machine came the unmistakable sound of a rabbit clearing its throat.