Every year, while the yearlings are otherwise occupied, senior students, especially those on the landscaping crew, decorate the Great Hall for Yule. When everyone wakes up the next morning, the decorations are simply there, as if by magic.
Allen would say it IS magic, that the amazing does not cease to be amazing just because work has gone in to accomplishing it.
I've gotten to be one of the "elves" doing the decorating, and I'd hoped to do it again this year, but Charlie had another idea.
"You wouldn't mind occupying your wife tonight, would you?" he asked me. I'd found him inspecting one of the spruce trees growing next to the Mansion's front door--an odd place for spruces, they aren't native here. I'd say they must pre-date the school, but they don't seem old enough. I think he was considering decorating them, too. "She has a talent for noticing things," he added.
Well, anything for Charlie, right?
I occupied June's attention rather effectively and she did not notice anything out of the ordinary until we came down to breakfast the next morning and found the Great Hall completely made over.
The decorations from the Fall were still up (except for the Thankyou Doll, who has long since been given honorable burial, and most of the pumpkins and squashes and apples, which have been eaten), so dry grape vines still crept up columns and across the ceiling, candles--tall tapers--still stood in silver holders. Decorative gourds in odd colors and strange shapes sat in state in bowls in in corners, here and there. Dry corn stalks still guarded the doorways. Bowls of candy still tempted all and sundry. But in among all of that, interwoven and over top of it, were garlands of pine and long strands of English ivy (an exotic Charlie battles to good purpose), vases full of cut winterberry holly branches, wreaths made from trimmings from area Christmas tree lots, strings of large, piles of fleece symbolizing snow....
And the Tree, the Yule Tree, in the far corner hung with strings of large, red beads, white and gold ribbon, golden balls hanging like fruit, and an entire flock of fantastic, blown-glass birds. And lit for the first time this year with brilliant warm white LEDs.
I knew it would all look even better at night, with everything lit and twinkling, and a fire lit, but coming down and finding it in the morning like that was amazing, even though I had known perfectly well it would be there and very roughly how it would look.
I turned to June to take in her reaction. She stood there with her mouth open for a few seconds, then, being a person who does, indeed, notice things, turned to me and said,
"You had an ulterior motive last night."
"I did not!" I told her. "How do you think all this happened? This is the result of the magic we made."
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