Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

In one fluid motion, Kelley slices off the top of the bottle. The crowd cheers. A server hands Kelley a flute that Kelley fills and then raises to the crowd.

“To Kevin and Isabelle. May they carry the love and the joy of this evening in their hearts for all the days of their marriage. God bless us, every one.”

The bandleader sings, “‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,’” and the guests form a ring around the floor while Kevin and Isabelle have their first dance. The first of many, many dances, Kelley hopes.

His work is done, he thinks. And now, he must lie down.

He can hear the party continuing on the other side of his closed bedroom door, but within minutes of lying down in the dark, Kelley is transported elsewhere.

The year is 1958. Kelley is six years old. He lives with his parents in Perrysburg, Ohio. His father works for Owens Corning; they have had a good year. Kelley and his brother, Avery, tiptoe down the stairs on Christmas morning to find that Santa has left them bicycles-a red two-wheeler with training wheels for Kelley and a blue tricycle for Avery. Kelley had sat on Santa’s lap at Lasalle and Koch in Toledo the week before, but he had been too shy to ask for a bike and so he’d said he wanted candy and the board game Monopoly.

In his stocking, Kelley finds candy canes, chocolates wrapped in foil, ribbon candy, sugared orange slices, licorice sticks, jelly beans, caramels, root beer barrels, butterscotch drops, Mary Janes, and Necco wafers. And under the tree is a long, flat box that turns out to be… Monopoly.

Santa is real!

It’s 1963. The president has been dead for two weeks. Kelley’s mother, Frances Quinn, is in mourning and says she doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas. Kelley can’t stand to think of his little brother, Avery, going without Christmas, so he takes over Matt Zacchio’s paper route for two weeks. Perrysburg is experiencing subfreezing temperatures and Matt is eager to hand the route over temporarily. Kelley makes thirty dollars and buys Avery what looks like a briefcase, but when the case is opened, it reveals art supplies: colored pencils, crayons, markers, pastels, and paints with different-size horsehair brushes. For the first time, Kelley understands what is meant by the saying “It is better to give than to receive.”

On Christmas morning, Kelley and Avery tiptoe down the stairs to find a wire crate in front of the fire. In the crate is a black Labrador puppy.

A puppy!

They name him Jack, after the late president, and the whole family is cheered, even Frances.

Santa is real!

It’s 1971. Kelley and Avery are teenagers. On Christmas Eve, they climb out onto the roof under their dormer window and share a joint. Avery sings “Joy to the World”-the Three Dog Night version. Jeremiah was a bullfrog. He is a great singer, and a star athlete as well. His grades put Kelley’s to shame. Kelley should hate him, but he doesn’t. He loves his brother with all his heart.

In the morning, they sleep in. In fact, Frances has to rap on their bedroom door to wake them. Presents have ceased to matter. What Kelley really wants is a bong, but he can hardly ask his parents for that and, as it turns out, Santa isn’t real.

But their mother is real and she has made eggs Benedict and eggnog French toast, she tells them. Because it’s Christmas, she says, she warmed the syrup and doubled up on the hollandaise.

Kelley and Avery race each other down the stairs.

It’s 1977 and Kelley and Margaret have a baby. They dress him up in a tiny Santa suit and stick him in the baby swing while they make Golden Dreams. The Golden Dream is a cocktail recipe Margaret found in Good Housekeeping. She wants to drink them every Christmas, she says. They’re a family now. They need traditions.

It’s 1986 and Kelley and Margaret have two little boys and a brand-new baby girl. Ronald Reagan is Santa Claus. Kelley is making a fortune trading petroleum futures. He and Margaret are able to buy a brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street, eighty-four blocks north of the brownstone Avery bought the year before with his partner, Marcus.

On Christmas, Kelley presents Margaret with a Cartier tank watch.

“This is too extravagant,” Margaret says.

“No,” Kelley says. “‘Too extravagant’ are the guys on the trading floor who go to Norma’s for breakfast and order the zillion-dollar omelet.”

“But this house is my present,” Margaret says.

“This house is our shelter,” Kelley says. “The watch is for you. You have put your career on hold in order to give me all of these beautiful, healthy children, including our new princess.”

He fastens the watch onto Margaret’s wrist.

“I’ll never take it off,” she says.

It’s 1987 and the stock market has just crashed. Kelley knows two men who have killed themselves in the past month. Kelley wanted to give Margaret carte blanche to decorate the brownstone with a real interior designer but now he thinks they’d better save their money.

They buy the boys a Nintendo, and Ava gets every shiny, beeping, talking toy that Fisher-Price makes. They decide they won’t buy gifts for each other. But they do have Golden Dreams.

It’s 1993 and Kelley can feel his marriage unraveling. How this happened, he isn’t quite sure. Work is killing him; he has to do twice as much to make the same money. He has to stay awake to watch the overseas market, so he has a coke habit, just like everyone else in his firm.

As the kids get older, there are bills, bills, and more bills: private school for the boys, a piano teacher for Ava. Margaret wants to work full-time but if she does that, who will run the household and care for the children? They are not getting a nanny. Kelley was raised by his mother, and his children will be raised by their mother. When Margaret calls him a chauvinist and a dinosaur, he goes to the office.

To cover for the dismal state of his marriage, Kelley suggests spending Christmas at Round Hill in Jamaica. It turns out to be seven days of heaven. They have a villa with its own pool; they eat jerk chicken and listen to reggae and do the limbo on the beach. Margaret and Kelley substitute rum punch for the Golden Dreams. Traditions are made to be broken, Kelley says.

It’s 2001 and the world has forever changed. The towers have come down; air travel will never feel safe again; Bush has declared war on Afghanistan.

Bart is five years old, a student at the Children’s House of Nantucket, a Montessori program where sharing is not required. If Bart is working on something-everything is called work at Montessori-and he doesn’t want to be interrupted by another child, he has been taught to say “Maybe another day.”

Bart uses this phrase at home any time he wants to be defiant. On Christmas Eve when Kelley and Mitzi dress him up for five o’clock Mass, he says, “Maybe another day.” When they tell him to finish his steamed snow peas, he says, “Maybe another day.” When they try to put him to bed early because Santa is coming, he says, “Maybe another day.”

Ava is sixteen. She doesn’t like Bart to bother her when she’s playing the piano because he bangs the keys. But on Christmas, she lets him lean against her as she plays “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night.” He falls asleep in her lap as she plays “Away in a Manger,” and Mitzi carries him to bed.

It’s 2010, the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and Kelley has accompanied some guests of the inn to the red-ticket drawing in town. It’s a Nantucket tradition, but Mitzi has just announced that she hates it. She finds it mercenary, a huge crowd gathering on Main Street… why? To see if they’ve won money. She’s going to stay home instead and have a cup of tea with George the Santa Claus, she says.