The Grump Who Found Christmas

Once upon a time long ago there existed an old Grump named Elmer who lived in a canyon under a tree. Well, actually, under many trees. Oak trees they were.

I do not call him a Grump without reason. Nothing pleased the old fool. I can attest to that without hesitation. I knew Elmer well and had for many years been aware of his dark slant on life. Happiness was for others. Elmer wanted his cup of gloom.

He went through most of his days complaining about something: the wind, the sun, the moon and even the frog that had somehow snuck into his house and croaked, as frogs will, when the mood took him.

“Who let that dirty frog in here?” Elmer shouted one day.

“He came in on his own, dear,” his patient wife said. “Just hippity-hopping to our indoor garden. He loves us.”

“Well, I don’t love him. Find him and we’ll eat his legs.”

“Shall I kill him first,” his wife said, “or will you just eat his legs while he squirms and screams?”

The poor woman bore the Grump as best she could, even as he complained that it was too hot or too cold or too light or too dark or too quiet or too noisy or too up or too down.

And though he was, as you can plainly see, in a constant state of annoyance, nothing irritated him more than Christmas.

*

He cowered back in his cave, I mean his work room, like an indignant troll, scowling at the season whose bells rang out mercy and fun and, as far as the Grump was concerned, noise.

“That’s what drives otters into the sea!” he grumbled one day at a radio station that was playing Christmas music.

“I don’t think they were otters, dear,” his wife said, always trying to be pleasant, no matter what. She was the light to his darkness, the yang to his yin.

“Otters, chipmunks, turtle doves, wart hogs, who gives a royale . . . “

“Don’t use dirty words, dear,” she said. “Your editor wouldn’t like that.”

And then, just to please him, she turned down the station that was playing Christmas music because she didn’t want him, though pain that he was, to be driven into the sea.

For years this went on through the entire season. He railed against spending money, against wrapping packages, against the odd human tendency to gape at colored lights, against crowds in the malls, against traffic and even against the dog.

The dog, you see, had a peculiar habit of staring at the Grump and smiling. Whether Dog, which was both his species and his name, stared and smiled more at Christmas or whether the Grump just noticed it more then was never clear.

“Tell that stupid creature to look the other way,” the Grump would say, baring his teeth.

“I know your face hurts when you try, but you might just smile back at him,” his wife often replied. “You could also try petting him.”

“Petting spreads germs,” the Grump growled. Dog just stared and smiled. The Grump glared.

*

Then one day, on an evening that gleamed with such beauty that even the Grump was ill-pressed to ignore, something happened. Unknown to him, his wife had summoned sprites to their modest house under the trees.

The sprites were known by the names of Travis, Nicole, Shana and Jeffrey, and they were accompanied by sprites emeriti, which is to say those who had grown to adulthood through the seasons of his memory.

It was Christmas Eve. They came from as far away as the great Northwest and from Sacramento, and as close as a house over the hill. They came with noise and laughter and a good deal of barking, the latter of which was Dog’s doing.

The Grump was startled by the noise and confusion. They hugged him and kissed him on the cheek and licked his hand, which was also Dog’s job. They called him Gramps, not Grump and celebrated the day.

It was an unheard of interruption in the life of the Grump known as Elmer. Most of his days, you see, were spent wandering the street and soaking up the mood of the vast village in which he lived. Over the years, overwhelming instances of misery and pain had chipped away at any sense of joy he might have once possessed. It left in him only a steel-hard core of reality.

But the sprites radiated a temperature of spirit that warmed the room, and the core of despair began to melt. There was magic in the air, you see, and magic will not be denied. And on this eve of Christmas, if only for a little while, the Grump found peace of mind and relaxed in the glow that the sprites provided, his cup of gloom drained.

He even smiled at the dog, Dog. And Dog, of course, smiled back.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com