Perfect

Vienna, 1938

"Thank you Doctor. This is perfect. And you are sure it's got the right … ingredients?" Wolfgang Liebeneiner took his gloves off to place it in the special box, and marked "Xmas" on the side before closing it. He had to get back to work.

"Of course." Eduard Pernkopf smiled. "Since the Third Reich has come into power, we have devoted all the scientific capacity of the entire University of Vienna to the cause." His smile was genuine. He'd been able to rise to the top of the heap just by understanding the politics, and he was dean of the greatest university in the world. Commitment to the promotion of racial cleansing had been a small price to pay.

"Yes, Hitler is very proud of your work here. But this piece… this looks so innocent. "

"I am honored that the Fuhrer even knows who I am. He is the greatest son of our home country and it is with joyful devotion and loyalty that we are able to employ what we have learned in our experiments to support this noble cause." He had to keep reminding himself. He was dean now.

"I must say I am happy and surprised, Eduard. Most of your profession isn't as enlightened. "

"They are weak. They don't understand the glory of the Aryan. And besides, if we had to rely solely on medicine, this task would not have been possible."

"What do you mean?" Wolfgang asked, concerned.

"Let's just say we had to import a little black magic, in furtherance of the cause. The craftsmanship is of course, pure German. No one makes Christmas ornaments like the Germans."

Liebeneiner laughed. "Whatever it takes, my friend. I'm having dinner with my brother -in-law's family tonight and we will observe how it works for ourselves. My wife thinks they are harboring Jews. Imagine, my own family!"

Pernkopf shook hands with the officer. "These are trying times indeed, my friend. Make sure no one is in contact with the infidel when it is employed. Magic like this is very hard to control. And I don't need to tell you to keep this quiet, do I?"

Liebeneiner raised his hand in the popular salute and tucked the box under his arm. "Yes, yes, I will be careful. It will be our little secret."

Upstate New York, 1969

"Lucinda! What are you doing up there? Just hand them down!"

Lucinda scooted the boxes of decorations to the edge of the attic entrance and peered through the opening at her father. "Just a minute, Dad, there's more!"

"More? It figures. Grandma never threw anything out. We already have more than any normal tree will hold. Come on down, honey."

"One second." Lucinda called back over her shoulder. She'd been given the job of retrieving the Christmas decorations because she was still short enough to stand up in the attic. Her mother might have been, but she was too busy with the baby, and her father was over six feet. Good Aryan stock, her Grandma used to say.

Lucinda stepped over the boxes that were ready to hand down to her Dad, and reached for one marked "Xmas," still tucked up under the attic eaves. She thought it odd because all the others were marked "Christmas" and she remembered Grandma always hating that abbreviation. "Don't ever take the Christ out of Christmas," she'd say.

Attic dust coated everything up there, but that Xmas box looked like it hadn't been moved since her great grandparents, Wolfgang and Gretchen, bought the old house in the forties. They had emigrated from Austria right before the war. Their son, Grandma's father, and his young wife Hilda had died before they came. Grandma wouldn't talk about it. She just said it was a terrible time, and prayed a lot.

After Wolfgang, and then Gretchen passed away, Grandma had been raised by her mother's cousin in Manhattan, and since the cousin's family was Jewish, they never celebrated Christmas. The beautiful old house Wolfgang and Gretchen had bought was closed up, but Grandma and Grandpa moved back when they married. They were active and generous people, and every year at Christmas time, they packed the whole family up for ski trips or cruises, always far from home. The family fortune was vast, Grandpa explained. Why not enjoy it?

Lucinda brushed the dust from her dark curls and watched the snow falling outside, happy that their first "real" Christmas was going to be a white one. It was good to be in a real house and not the city apartment or traveling for a change. She frowned to herself. Had Grandma lived longer, they might still be there. It seemed she got meaner after Grandpa died, spending more and more time with her clubs, always muttering about changing the will.

House hunting had been fun for a while, but every house they looked at seemed to "be under contract" as soon as Lucinda's dad took his family to see it. Lucinda heard her dad use the term "block buster" and her mom sadly laugh "there goes the neighborhood" each time they drove away from another of the neat suburbs. They had been looking since they'd learned the baby was on its way. Noah was three months old now and smiling.

Now though, they were all going a little crazy about the holidays. They decided to decorate for all the holidays of their heritage. The menorah sat on the fireplace, in honor of their cousins, the Kwanzaa flags from mother's side by the doors. They were staying home, cooking goose and roasting chestnuts, and wanted to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. They didn't want to deal with the rest of the world this year, the staring and the rude comments Lucinda heard people say about her parents whenever they were out together in public.

Lucinda tugged the Xmas box from under the eave, leaving bits of paper from the bottom where it had stuck over the years. She didn't look inside, but pushed it to the edge of the attic opening so she could hand it down with the rest.

****
"Is it straight?"

Lucinda's dad was lying on the floor beneath the biggest Douglas fir that was left in the lot. They'd had to cut another foot off the trunk just to fit it in the house, but it was beautiful and its soft needles smelled of the clean outdoors. She stepped back and squinted. "It's leaning a little too far to the right, Dad."

"Your right or mine?" He grunted. He didn't like being under the tree, she guessed.

"Toward the kitchen." The scent of gingerbread and cocoa came from that direction. "I think it smells the cookies!"

He laughed and adjusted the pins again as she stepped around it, surveying. "Perfect. It’s going to look so great!"

He crawled out and admired the tree. "Yes, it is isn't it? Let's get the decorations on!"

They strung multi-colored lights, testing first to make sure they all lit. Then they hung the glass balls, straw snowflakes and tiny toys from the attic. The baby finally napped, and Lucinda's mom came into the room with cocoa and gingerbread for Lucinda and eggnog for her Dad. "It’s beautiful, " she declared, tears in her eyes. "Ready for a break?"

Lucinda's dad was hanging the last ornament up as high as he could reach. "Yes, I think we are finished. Shall we turn on the lights?"

Lucinda stacked the empty boxes together to shove back up in the attic until after Christmas. It was then she noticed the unopened "Xmas" box. "Look, we forgot one!"

"I don't think we need any more ornaments honey. The tree is covered!" Her dad took a cup of the eggnog and sipped. "Wow. This is wonderful. I feel like something out of a storybook. It's so nice not to be packing for trip for a change. I wish Mom and Dad could have enjoyed this kind of Christmas."

Lucinda slipped the lid from the dusty box and caught her breath. Inside was an angel, dressed in silver and gold. Her porcelain face had a far off expression and honey blond tresses curled around her shoulders and over her wings. "Oh Daddy. Wait 'til you see!"

She carried the box and held it reverently as she walked to where her parents were sitting. "An angel for the treetop. The finishing touch. " He set his eggnog on the table and took the old box from Lucinda's hands. "She practically glows. " He turned the angel around. "There is an inscription in the porcelain. Wow. I never knew mom had anything like this. I guess little boys don't remember details very well."

"It must be very valuable. Do you think we should really use it?" Lucinda's mother asked.

"What harm is there in putting it on the tree on Christmas Eve? " He reached toward the top of the tree and realized that he was just a few inches too short to place something so delicate there. "Tell you what, Lucinda. How about you climb on my shoulders and put her where she belongs?" He turned to his wife and handed her the switch for the lights and smiled. "You can do the honors."

Lucinda felt her father's hands on her waist as he lifted her, and his strong shoulders as she swung around to sit on them. Her mother lifted the box to her, and as Lucinda picked up the angel, she smiled, watching her mother clasp her father's hand. It was all so perfect.

As soon as she placed the angel on the tree, the serene expression on the porcelain face changed into an almost euphoric grin. Lucinda steadied the angel with her hand, confused at what she'd done to it. Her mother clicked the switch to the lights.

For a moment, the tree glowed with all the glory of a Christmas miracle. Then the angel 's silver gown turned to black, and the golden threads glowed with red flame. One by one, starting at the top, each of the lights on the tree turned from bright green or red or white to black, until the tree, from top to trunk, glowed with a black darker than all the hatred in the world. At the same time, a cold current ran through Lucinda's fingers. It started where she touched the Angel, and sped through her arm into her body and legs. She felt her father go rigid as the cold jumped from her legs onto his shoulders. It traveled through him, reaching the fingers clasped to his wife in less than a blink of an eye. Lucinda's mother felt the tingle, and though t it must be a short from the lights, and looked up, but the cold gained speed and energy as it traveled up her arm, through her heart and spread through the rest of her body. The door to the house blew open, the ancient hinges reversing for the malevolent cold. It blew out of the house, then the door blew back in, not even hesitating at the latch. The clean wind of the white Christmas blew in.

The baby's cry through the open door on Christmas morning finally got the attention of a patrol car doing the quiet morning rounds of the affluent street. Even then, it took three passes by the house before they went inside. "What makes a family abandon a baby on Christmas? " The officer asked his partner.

"Well, this was that "mixed" family, you know? Hard to tell what they were thinking." They'd walked through the house and discovered nothing amiss, except for the Christmas ornaments spread all over the floor in the living room, and four piles of what looked like dust, already scattered by the hours of wind. "People are weird about holidays. He picked up the beautiful angel in the center. "Nice stuff though. Look at this." He turned the angel, and moved aside the perfect silver gown so his partner could read the inscription.

"Salem Mass, 1688. Wow."

"Wow indeed." He placed it gently back into a box marked "Xmas" that looked as though it was made for it.

Iran, 2004

Really, Shazia, we have to go. The trust my grandfather set up says when I am 35,I officially own the place after all, and all that snow…don't you want to get out of this desert for a while? We can celebrate Christmas the old fashioned way. "

"Noah, my father would disown me forever if he knew I was celebrating Christmas at all! You know that! We've been together ten years, and he still thinks you are Muslim!"

"I do fit in so well, so long as I keep my head shaved and he never sees I have curly African hair instead of that nice straight stuff your brothers have!" Noah didn't care about the silly old man.

"I just can't Noah. It's bad enough I wouldn't marry his choice for me." Shazia shuddered as she thought of the nice Bedouin friend of her fathers, and all those camels.

"Shazi, you and I are married. We have a new baby. Don't you think its time we started doing things we want to do instead of what THEY want all the time? You really think Allah will punish you for celebrating a "pagan "holiday?"

She laughed. That's infidel if you don't mind. If you are going to make fun of the religion, get your terms right."

"Infidel, pagan, whatever. Just a holiday about a baby being born. One that changed history. Maybe our son will be the next great peacekeeper. Maybe if we bring him up with love instead of hate…" He took her hands and gave her the little boy look she never resisted.

"You're right, Noah. I know you are. Just something feels … I don't know. Foreboding."

He pulled her into his arms. "You've already thrown off your burqa; you are a Harvard grad. A little snow, chestnuts on the open fire, heck, we can even get a tree. We don't have to go to church or anything. Just come celebrate Christmas with me in the old house. Let's see how we like the lifestyle."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "I don't suppose we have to tell my family. It will be our little secret, okay?"

"You'll see. It will be perfect."