Thoughts on One Christmas Eve by Langston Hughes

White shadows in the snow

There are so many things going on in this story that I felt it was worth talking about, particularly at this time of year. Even though it’s a festive tale, it’s not a jolly one. It’s a tale about poverty and race and innocence. How Hughes plays these themes against each other is wonderful and well worth taking note of (whether you’re a reader or a writer).

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A journey through the story

Standing over the hot stove cooking supper, the colored maid, Arcie, was very tired.

This is our opening line, and in a way, it tells you everything about the story and her state of mind. We see Arcie very clearly, standing there at the stove, head down, shoulders perhaps slumped, defeated. This image plays through the whole tale - she’s been beaten down, learned to live with what she’s got, not to rock the boat. This is what plays so well against Joe, her son, and his excitement for Christmas and his naivety of their situation.

Arcie waits for the ‘Missus’ to come back, getting more and more irritated as time goes by. It’s Christmas Eve and Arcie needs to go shopping to get her Joe a present before the shops close, but the white family are taking their sweet time. This adds a nice tension to the tale.

The tension is heightened further by the fact that Arcie needs to wait on Missus to be giving her seven dollars pay so she can afford to buy Joe something. Then, Missus says she only has five dollars to be able to give Arcie.

Missus doesn’t understand the ramifications this could have on someone who is living penny to penny (or cent to cent as we’re in America). We are drawn to empathise with Arcie in this situation, which is an impossible one. We feel that she wants to get angry, demand her money, but she is in a situation where she can’t rock the boat. She says, politely, “I’d like to have seven. I needs it.”

She grabs Joe in a rush, and they head down to the shops. Everything is winter wonderland white, snow everywhere, people jolly with festive cheer, the whole lot.

Then we get a nice touch of warning or foreboding from Hughes:

In front of the City Hall there was a Christmas tree – but it didn’t have no presents on it, only lights.

Joe is bright-eyed at all the shops, wanting to go see the toys, saying he wants to see Santa, but Arcie drags him on. It’s almost ten and the shops will be closing, plus, she only has a little money, so if she is to get Joe something, she’ll need to find something cheap that she can afford. The fact that she’s spied the tree with no presents echoes her fear back at us. It’s a nice touch to add a little more tension to the tale. Will she be able to get him something on time? Will it be nice enough? Will Joe appreciate it, understand he can’t get cool, big things like all the shoppers are carrying around?

As they pass a movie theater, Joe stops, saying he wants to go in. This is where we get another stark reminder of racial segregation. “In these here small towns, they don’t let colored folks in.”

Joe says, Oh, but we feel here that this is a boy who is still trying to piece together what he can and can’t do in this world (quite rightly). Why can’t he go to the pictures?

Arcie finds a store, but needs Joe to wait outside so he doesn’t see what she’s going to buy him. As he waits, he marvels at the festive street around him:

Gee, Christmas was pretty. All tinsel and stars and cotton. And Santa Claus a-coming from somewhere, dropping things in stockings. And all the people in the streets were carrying things, and the kids looked happy.

This is where he gets into a spot of innocent bother. His excitement gets the better of him. He moves further and further away from the shop Arcie left him outside, getting to the movie theater.

In the theater, he sees white children and grown-ups standing around Santa. Joe shoves his way inside, excited, fancying that maybe Santa will give him one of the presents stacked up in piles. He can’t read the signs around him as he goes, which gives us as readers more of a clue of what might happen as Joe gets nearer to Santa. This serves well to make this scene a bit tense as we go through it, unsure of what will happen to Joe.

Everybody stops and grins at Joe as they notice him. There’s a pause, then an excellently written passage that shocks us (and Joe):

Then Santa Claus stooped down and slyly picked up one of his lucky number rattles, a great big loud tin-pan rattle like they use in cabarets. And he shook it fiercely right at Joe. That was funny. The white people laughed, kids and all.

Hughes could’ve simply said Santa shouted at him, scared him off, said Scram! But, he shows us Santa stooping down. As readers, we think – is Santa going to be kind? Do the nice thing here and give Joe a present? Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to have a good impact here.

But, no. He picks up the rattle and makes everyone laugh at Joe, causing him to turn and flee.

He gets outside into the snow, and Arcie finds him, raging that he ran off. ‘Serves you right,’ she says when Joe tells her what happened.

And that marks the end of the tale. He’s chided for running off, made to feel a fool for trusting that something good will happen. He should listen to her and know his place, their place.

Use of colour

The subject matter and themes themselves are what make this tale so powerful, but there a couple of things I want to call out that stood out to me while reading this.

The first is the use of colour. Colour as in race, yes, but also the use of colour to play against these racial tensions.

After our Joe is runned out of the theater and his encounter with Santa goes wrong, he’s in the street, catching his breath, trying to realise what has just happened. He’s a bit lost, wanting his mother to find him and Hughes hits us with this:

There were too many people, all white people, moving like white shadows in the snow, a world of white people.

Is this the point in his life when some of his naivety will fade? Is this when he will start to relent, or will he start to rebel against prejudice? This feels to me like a very character-forming event, something he’ll always remember. And will he look back and be mad at his mum for not being mad about it?

‘A world of white people’. This end to the sentence gives it a flavour of realisation. The world is for the white people, or so it seems here. Where’s his place in it? Where’s his Christmas joy? Even the world itself is white here.

Innocence

If I were to say what the main theme of this story was, I’d say it was innocence. Hughes masterfully plays Joes innocence against Arcie’s defeated life. He plays the innocence of Santa against racial prejudice. These are very powerful things to contrast against each other and that’s where the power in this story lies.

Or was it a man? Little Joe’s eyes opened wide. No, it was not a man at all. It was Santa Claus!

Here we see how built-up Santa is in Joe’s mind. Santa is not a man, he’s something more. Something better. This excites him to no end before he sneaks away to see him and the rattle incident confuses him.

Right at the end, Arcie says, “I told you once – and he’s just a old white man.”

Joe says, Oh, and that’s how the tale ends. Has Arcie told Joe that Santa isn’t real? robbing him of that childhood innocence?

Season’s greetings

What did you think of this tale? Did I ramble on for too long? Since this story was shorter, I’ll sneak in another (merrier) tale before we break for the Christmas period.

Wishing you the most cheerful festive period and may your shadow never grow less,

Paul O