Just wondering...

When I stopped by Tim Hortons that morning, like I always did on Fridays, it was closed. Tim Hortons, closed? About a dozen people were milling around, shaking their heads and talking in hushed tones. Angels, someone said, in a field just south of town, off highway 41. Swamp gas and a case of Pilsner, I thought. But still, Tim Hortons... closed. Who ever heard of such a thing?

By the time I got to work the talk was everywhere. The shop was closed, and everyone just standing at the gate, or sitting in their cars, like back at Tim’s, and talking. Jeff and Pete were going on about some kids who’d had a baby in a shed behind the Co-op. And Rita said she heard they’d left town early, before anyone had even got their names. Something about someone trying to kill them. Girl’s dad no doubt.

This is not the sort of thing that ever happens around here. Maybe in a big city like New York, or even Toronto, but not here. It’s all very sad of course, but since we never heard any more about them we figured that they must have been okay. But the shop closed?... on a regular Friday?... a long weekend at the end of December?... just a week before the New Year break? What’s that about? And Tim Hortons never closes, I wondered. Everybody wondered.

By noon reindeer started showing up, and all the kids were out of school. Someone put a string of lights on the big tree down at city hall, and I heard some kids laughing and saying they’d found things in their sox when they got up this morning; good things. And when I called home to see if Sandy had heard anything she told me her folks were coming for dinner. On a Friday night? On bowling night?

Seems a long time ago now, but ever since that day, every year: the factory closes, schools, stores and businesses take time off, and Tim Hortons shuts down for the whole day. And every year there are reindeer in store widows and on rooftops, and lights on trees and houses. Sandy’s parents come for dinner, every year, even if it’s bowling night – the bowling alley’s closed. And we all find presents in our sox, and give each other presents. We actually put sox out now, and some have even made special sox just for this one night. And no one seems to know quite why it happens.

To be continued...