EVERY CHRISTMAS tree has its quiet authority figures.
By that I don’t mean the the glittering baubles or strings of beads and lights, but the decorations that return each year, with the spirit of an old friend stepping back into the room, brushing off the cold and saying:
‘Well then, here we are again.’
My own special decoration is a frog.
He is made of felt and stitches, love and care. He’s dressed in a green suit and jacket, and crowned with a top hat which he proudly waves aloft; attire, in fact, that would not look out of place among the grandeur of Toad Hall itself.
FROG ― AS YET unnamed ― has the unmistakable bearing of a gentleman of the riverbank: self-assured, faintly comical, and utterly convinced that, however the year may have unfolded since his last appearance, things will proceed as they always have … splendidly!
Each December, once the boxes of decorations have been opened, there is a small but important moment. Before lights are tested or baubles untangled, I look for him. And there he is — unchanged, unhurried, unruffled, as though he has merely been waiting in another room all this time.
He reminds me, inevitably, of The Wind in the Willows. There is something deeply Willows-like about the frog’s annual reappearance. He doesn’t announce himself. He simply belongs.
He has a proper place on the tree, too. It is one not open to negotiation.
Just like Rat’s armchair by the fire or Badger’s kitchen deep underground, it is where he belongs, and is where he shall be again.
And again.
From there, he surveys the room with what I imagine is kindly approval, as though the tree itself were an extension of the riverbank — another small, shining world temporarily made safe.
IN A SEASON increasingly dominated by noise, novelty, commercialism and urgency, Frog represents something older and steadier. He asks nothing of us, his adopted family. He does not change his costume, update his style, or attempt to impress. He simply returns, year on year, reminding us that Christmas is not about newness, nor about airs and graces, but about coming home.
And so each year, when Frog is back on his branch, green suit immaculate, top hat flourished in greeting, Christmas can properly begin.
For now, the tree feels settled, the room feels warmer. And somewhere, I like to think, Rat is putting the kettle on, Mole is squinting out at the frost, and Toad — well — Toad is being Toad.
And surely that’s just as it should be.
Merry Christmas!
RAVEN MOON 