Skipping Christmas

Although Luther loves and misses his daughter, Nora is the most affected by the prospect of a Christmas without Blair. Nora also has more difficulty giving up the best parts of the holiday, and she pushes back somewhat against Luther’s proposal to skip Christmas entirely, refusing to let him skip charitable donations. Nora also cares more than Luther does about keeping the peace with their neighbors, repeatedly suggesting they compromise for the sake of maintaining their relationships. However, as community pressure and censure mounts, she grows more confident that she and Luther are making the correct choice. Particularly in her charitable work, she grows more conscious and resentful of the petty pressures and catty infighting that preoccupy the women of her social class. Just when she finally throws off her need to please everyone, Blair calls and changes everything. Nora’s panicky lie to Blair demonstrates a central difference between her and her husband. Whereas Luther insists on telling Blair the truth, Nora’s lie illustrates her understanding that Blair would be devastated to know she had wrecked their plans. Her emotional sensitivity—which provides a healthy balance to Luther’s rigidity—becomes a driver of the plot’s climax.

Blair is a sheltered only child. By joining the Peace Corps, Blair is asserting her independence as a young adult and distancing herself from her parents so she can grow up. Like her mother, she is caring, maternal, and agreeable—she used to be a beloved babysitter and big sister figure to the younger kids on Hemlock Street, and now she is venturing far from home to teach young children how to read. Her absence forces her parents to re-consider their relationship, their values, and their lives and inspires them to take a stand against the excess and materialism of Christmas. When they have rejected the holiday wholesale, she reappears, pushing Nora and Luther to take a more balanced approach to the holiday. Ultimately, they decide to uphold what really matters to them about Christmas—such as community, kindness, helping others in need—and ignore the rest.

Vic Frohmeyer is a comic figure—a little pompous and self-important but not so much as to be obnoxious. Characterized as “the unelected ward boss of Hemlock Street” (38), Vic is both intrusive and benevolent. He provides an informal organizational structure—buttressed by his irrepressible son Spike—that enables the Hemlock Street community to work together and support each other through crisis. His direction helps the neighborhood to coordinate large-scale projects, as when they work together to mount the Frostys. The neighborhood would be less close-knit without his officiousness, but his desire for control grates on Luther and Nora when they decide to do things differently and not participate in the annual Christmas traditions. Ultimately he overcomes his displeasure with them to help them throw a last-minute Christmas party for Blair and her fiancé.

Spike is a 12-year-old extension of his father, leading and organizing the neighborhood children as his father does the adults, and spearheading the “Free Frosty” campaign. He busily patrols the neighborhood and its environs and reports any irregularities to his father.