“There are people who deny everything that’s good and true,” I took the conversation over, “but their lack of faith hurts no one as much as themselves. Would you like to hear about the old man who denied there was a Santa Claus and to learn what happened to him?”
“Please, please!” they all cried, and I began the story:
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Once upon a time there was an old man whose name was Mr. Grouch, and he had lived so many years that he could hardly count them. He was little, and thin, and bent over, and wrinkled, and he had a scraggly little beard and cross, snapping eyes. He used to carry a big stick that he would shake at the boys when they laughed at him, and he never had a smile for anybody. He lived all alone with one crabbed old man-servant in a vast house, and no one even dared to ring the doorbell.
One Christmas eve I was coming down the street taking gifts around to some friends, and my mind was full of Christmas. There was a new fall of snow on the ground and the sleighbells were jingling. Even the busy shopkeepers seemed to be in the Christmas spirit. Banks of fir-trees stood on the corners, and every now and then I passed some one proudly carrying home a tree over his shoulder. All of a sudden, whom should I see coming toward me but old Mr. Grouch, looking crosser than ever. He was shaking his stick at the Christmas trees and scowling at the fat turkeys, and for a moment I was half afraid to speak to him. Still it seemed too bad not to give the old man the season’s greetings, so I called out as cheerily as I could—“A Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Grouch!”
He turned on me, coming quite close and shaking his big stick in my face, so that he frightened me. “A Merry Nonsense!” he snarled, biting the words off short. “You should go home and attend to your business, not go running around wasting your own time and other people’s. This Merry Christmasing is all nonsense, I tell you, fit only for children and simpletons. There’s no such person as Santa Claus! It’s all a myth concocted by idle folk to fool the children.”
I stood quite still, rooted to the spot, in terror lest Santa Claus should see me in such bad company.
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Mr. Grouch!” I finally brought out. “It’s wicked to deny the spirit of Christmas.”
“Wicked or not wicked,” he retorted, “I say it again—A Merry Nonsense to you and all your kind!”
He looked so fierce that I hastened on my way without another word, and as I turned the corner, I still heard him muttering—“A Merry Nonsense! A Merry Nonsense!”