It matched the one she’d made for Garth; I had not received one. “Christmas,” Ninna said. “Ought to spend it at home. Might be a good idea to go to church, even.” “No Lutheran church around here,” I said. “Where would you go?” She shrugged. “Ought to go to church on Christmas.” Despite my best efforts to keep the day harmonious I opened my mouth. “And why would that be?” “Jesus’s birthday,” she said quietly, gazing in her placid, bovine way at an abandoned dugout just outside of town. The land was unoccupied and had been since before I’d arrived, and I’d never heard whose place it had been or why it had been abandoned. “Nothing to do with Jesus. It’s just a way to mark the fact that winter’s halfway over. People were lighting fires and having Christmas parties a long time before Jesus came along.” She clucked, looking rather pretty with her cheeks ruddied by the wind. We saw the Rectors on their way to the Methodist services, and Tiny called out to us as we passed them.
