Amy flopped on the sofa and eyed the room. A whole afternoon of decorating had resulted in six Christmas cards taped to the wall, one ragged construction paper chain meandering miserably up the banister and, on the coffee table, a plate of neon-colored cookies shaped only vaguely like angels.

There were two choices as Amy saw it. Cry—or pick up the pieces and keep trying.

“We three kings …“ she sang, picking popcorn off the carpet. They always make stringing this stuff look so easy in those old-fashioned Christmas books, she thought.

“I’m sure there’s more in the kitchen,” someone said above her. “You don’t have to eat if off the floor.”

Amy looked up at her sister Megan and pretended not to wonder how long she’d been standing there. Instead, she focused on the bags Megan was carrying.

“What’s in there?”

Megan sized up the living room. “What is all this?”

“A popcorn chain for our tree. Come on, what’s in the bags? Are those presents for us?”

Megan pawed through her purse for her brush. “Dream on.”

“Who are they for?”

“Me. Jeans I got on sale, OK? Anything else you want to know about my personal life?”

“Don’t flip out! Just wondering.” Amy toyed nonchalantly with the popcorn. “I thought maybe you went Christmas shopping.”

Megan gave a feminine snort. “Fat chance this year.”

“You’ve got a job. You’ve got money!”

“Right—to buy myself all the stuff Dad used to fork over. Only now it’s going to rent.”

Amy looked up sharply. “It isn’t Dad’s fault he lost his job.”

“I know.” Megan tossed her head down and brushed.

“Besides, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have Christmas spirit.”

Megan looked up at the paper chain. “Is that what this is?”

“Kind of.”

Megan jabbed her brush into her purse. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to get any spirit going in this family. If you’ll recall, Dad has no job, and he’s pretty down. Mom’s worried about him and bills and us and . . . ”

“So you and I and Link should make Christmas for Mom and Dad, and then maybe everything will start getting back to the way it used to be.”

“And then poof!” The front door slammed and Link appeared. “Like magic we’ll be the Brady Bunch. Give it up, Squirt.”

He dropped his gym bag by the door and looked around.

“What happened in here?” he asked.

“I’m decorating for Christmas. And I want you guys to help.”

Megan rolled her eyes. “Amy, would you get off it? We aren’t exactly rolling in money right now. And with Mom working, who has time to do all this stuff?”

“We do,” Amy said.

“Watch who you’re calling we,” Link said. “I’ve got basketball practice every day this week.”

He dropped onto the couch, catching sight of the cookies. “What’s this?”

“Look,” Megan said, “Mom’ll probably buy us each a couple of things.”

“Who cares about the presents?” Amy exploded.

“I do,” Link said. “And the food. Is there anything to eat?”

“I care about things I can do something about,” Megan said. “Graduating—getting into college. We’re talking real world here.”

“Celebrating Christmas is real world,” Amy said stubbornly.

“Food is real world.” Link rubbed his stomach. “Did Mom go shopping yet?”

“There are cookies right under your nose,” Amy said.

“This is a cookie?” Link tapped one on the coffee table.

Megan shook her head in her I’m-the-big-sister way. “Real world is preparing for when life kicks you in the face—which it invariably does.”

Link sniffed the angel-shaped pastry. “You’re sure this is a cookie?”

“Some things just don’t mean the same thing anymore,” Megan said. “The little family with the Mom in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies doesn’t last forever.”

“But it used to be so fun!” Amy wailed.

Link bit into the cookie and yelped. “OW! Man—I think I broke a tooth!”

Amy leaned in toward Megan. “Remember how we used to do those Christmas pageants and use that big closet for a dressing room?”

Megan sighed. “I admit we always had a great time, but —"

“You know what I remember,” Link interrupted, “is the way Mom used to stash our presents in that closet, and we weren’t supposed to go near it or else they’d disappear or something.”

Amy bounced over to the arm of Megan’s chair. “See? We remember what Christmas was!”

“I wonder,” Link continued, “if Mom’s got anything stashed in there this year.”

He got up and stalked toward the walk-in closet. Amy threw herself in front of it.

“No!” she screamed. “Something has to stay the same.”

“Good grief, Amy, don’t get hysterical,” Megan said.

“I’m gonna find something to eat.” Link eyed the cookies on the coffee table. “Something edible.”

Megan grabbed the shopping bags. “I’m going to go wash these jeans.” She gave Amy a matronly smile. “Hang in there, Am. You’ll grow up sooner or later.”

The doors to the kitchen and bedroom slammed, and Amy sagged limply against the closet door. They were wrong. Christmas could be the way it used to be.

She looked around at her decorations and sighed. But if even Link couldn’t eat her cookies, this wasn’t going to do it. She slumped down to the floor and felt the closet doorknob bump down her back. There wasn’t even anything in the closet.

“We three kings …“ she sang bleakly. And then it came to her. There wasn’t anything in the closet—yet. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be—soon.

A Christmas Plan
It wasn’t easy fitting eight kids in their living room, and the noise the next afternoon was more than even Link raised when he watched the Bengals on TV. Amy had to stand on the coffee table to get their attention. Oatmeal grabbed the plate of cookies from beside her feet. He was the only one of Link’s friends who wasn’t jacking his jaws nonstop.

“Now listen up,” Amy began. “Megan and Link have lost the meaning of Christmas.”

Brady grabbed Scott. “Quick, call 911!”

“Knock it off,” Jody said. “Let her talk.” Jody was one of Megan’s tougher friends.

“All I want you guys to do,” Amy continued, “is to get into these costumes, get in the closet, and when I read your part, come out and reenact the nativity scene for Link and Megan.”

Tammy snorted. “I’m Meg’s good friend, but I’m not that good!”

“Uh, count me out, too,” Brady added.

Amy pounded the table. “Come on, you guys! Think of the great material you’ll get for those ‘What I Did over the Christmas Holidays’ essays when we go back to school.”

Brady looked at her sideways. “Maybe.”

There was a general mumbling around the room. Amy took it for a yes and glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here any minute. Hurry up and get into these costumes.”

Amy held her breath for a second, but Jody and Katie took the sheets and went into the closet giggling. She turned to Tammy.

“You and Colette and Jennifer are the shepherds. Here are some bathrobes.” She stopped as Jennifer reached for one. “I told you to bring your baby brother, Jen.”

“My mom wouldn’t let me borrow him,” Jennifer whined. “I brought my old Cabbage Patch doll, though.”

Scott lunged for it. “You still play with dolls?”

“Go, you guys,” Amy directed, intercepting the doll. Tammy, Colette and Jennifer joined Jody and Katie in the closet.

“So who are we? Brady said.

“The wise guys,” Amy said. “Where’s Oatmeal?”

Scott turned to the sofa where Oatmeal was finishing up the cookies.

Amy handed Brady a short bathrobe of her dad’s, a trench coat and a snowsuit she’d found in another closet. Scott grabbed the snowsuit.

“What’s this? Something you wore when you were . . . 3?!?”

“Those are the only costumes left,” Amy said.

Brady held up the trench coat. “The trench coat has moth holes in it! Give it to Oatmeal.”

Amy plunked a metal colander on Oatmeal’s head. “This is your crown.”

The Plan Takes Shape
The front doorknob jiggled. Amy could hear Link’s voice. “Quick—into the closet! When you come out, look royal.” She looked doubtfully at Oatmeal as he obediently entered the closet. “Or at least look human.”

“I am not doing this, Amy!” Brady hissed. But he and Scott disappeared behind the door as their director leaned against it.

The front door opened, and Link and Megan came in behind a barrage of grocery bags.

“Man, I can’t believe we spent almost $100!” Link groaned.

“Only because you bought three boxes of Cocoa Puffs,” Megan snapped.

Amy cleared her throat, and both of them looked at her, then at each other.

“What are you doing, Squirt?” Link said.

Megan’s eyebrows moved suspiciously. “You were looking in the Christmas closet, weren’t you? You little sneak! What happened to ‘something has to stay the same’?”

“I wasn’t looking, honest!” Amy said.

“Then why are you standing there?”

Amy moved away from the closet door ultra-casually.

“I’ve decided you guys are right,” she said. “I was stupid to think I could recreate Christmas and make it like it used to be. So I say we open the closet.”

There was a thud from the inside.

“What have you got in there?” Megan demanded. As she headed for it, Amy backed toward the couch and picked up the Bible from the coffee table. Megan flung open the door, and Jody and Katie met her nose to nose.

“Sit down, Megan and Link,” Amy said. “This is Christmas.”

Grinning at Katie, Link pulled Megan to a chair. “This I gotta see.”

Amy nodded to Katie and Jody, who emerged from the closet, wrapped haphazardly in sheets. Amy read, “You will conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.” “So what are these? Angels?” Megan asked.

Amy nodded and Tammy, Colette and Jennifer moved out of the closet, garbed in bathrobes. Megan snorted.

"And in that region,” Amy read, “there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night—"

Megan and Link both fell into a fit of snorting, but Amy kept reading. The angels and shepherds alternated between giggling at Link and glaring at Amy.

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,” Amy read, “behold wise men from the East came to Jerusalem—”

Scott, Brady and Oatmeal emerged, and Link collapsed on the floor. Brady had commandeered the short bathrobe. Scott was in the snowsuit, and Oatmeal wore the moth-bitten trench coat. Scott and Brady stood, saucepans on heads, clutching their wristwatches—seething. Only Oatmeal, who held the plate and wore a colander on his head, stayed in character.

“Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” Amy read.

“One word of this to anybody at school and you all die,” Brady warned through clenched teeth.

Amy put Jennifer’s Cabbage Patch doll into Megan’s arms. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.”

Megan spluttered as Scott pushed his Timex onto her lap. But Oatmeal came forward solemnly and deposited his plate on Megan’s knee like it was the Holy Grail.

“Did you actually eat those?” Link gasped, looking at the empty cookie plate. “He did!”

Oatmeal kneeled, following Amy’s directions to the letter. Megan looked for a moment at the doll and then back at Oatmeal, on his knees in a trench coat.

“And he shall reign forever and ever, without ever changing.”

“It doesn’t say that,” Tammy whispered over Amy’s shoulder.

But no one commented. It had become very quiet. Amy looked expectantly at Megan, who was still holding the doll and looking at Oatmeal, who was still kneeling.

“Did he fall asleep?” Link asked. “Nah, he ate those cookies. He’s probably dead.”

“Be quiet,” Megan said.

Link looked at her in surprise.

Christmas Is . . .

“I get it,” she said.

“Get what?” Link asked. “That Brady has nice legs in that robe?”

“I’ll break your face,” Brady said.

“I get what Amy’s trying to say,” Megan stated. “I mean, OK, this was dumb.”

“I sure feel dumb,” Scott said.

“But she’s right. Don’t you remember how it was when we were kids and we did a Christmas pageant for Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah,” Link pointed to Scott’s snowsuit. “You made me wear that.”

“I remember though,” Megan said, “that feeling I used to get, like I was really Mary.”

Link smirked. “Good luck!”

“No, I mean it. I haven’t felt that in years, ’til Oatmeal shows up in that thing.”

Amy could feel herself beaming.

“Maybe you’re right, Amy,” Megan said. “Maybe some things don’t have to change.”

Everybody peeled off their costumes and filed out the door.

Amy picked up the Bible. “And they departed to their own country by another way,” she read.

Oatmeal, who was still kneeling in front of Amy, got up, bowed reverently and backed toward the door.

“You know,” Megan said, “with all the garbage that’s been going on around here, we need something that isn’t going to do a total turnaround when we aren’t looking.”

Megan looked around at Amy’s decorations. “Let’s do Christmas!”

Amy was on her. “We could get a tree and buy presents and hide them in the closet. You could bake some cookies— I stink at it.”

“True,” Link said.

“And Dad would probably get really excited and start looking for a job again.”

She saw Megan look at Link. “Amy, about that …"

“It probably won’t happen that way, Squirt,” Link said.

“But why not? You just said everything doesn’t have to change.”

Megan sighed. “But some things just do change. It may be the pits, but it’s the real world.”

“Welcome to it, Squirt,” Link said.

Amy toyed with a saucepan. “I hate it.”

“You’ve got a right to,” Megan said.

Amy looked up. “But there’s always Christmas.”

“And we’re gonna do it,” Megan said.

Link headed for the kitchen. “You guys do it. I’m gonna get something to eat and go to basketball practice.”

Megan looked across at Amy. “He’s gonna do Christmas with us.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Link said. “Hey!”

He tried to run, but they were too fast for him. “Say you’ll go cut mistletoe!” Megan screamed as she tackled him to the ground.

“OK—OK—come on you guys . . . hey, no tickling!”

“And cut a tree?” Amy jabbed him in the ribs.

“All right! Stop it! I’ll do it. I’ll even wear the kimono!”

Megan snorted and kept tickling him. Amy just smiled.