The colorful old cardboard Santa Claus with the moving head was the first sign of Christmas that year. It had appeared in the window of Mr. Zirkle's tiny grocery store ever since the boy could remember.

The gaudy apparition seemed a bit earlier than usual. Mr. Zirkle was not one to waste electricity on a wagging Santa before it was necessary. It usually was turned on the week before Christmas, but here it was, just after the first of December and already the Jolly Old Elf was moving his eyes back and forth.

Inside the store, an array of hard candies and horehound drops had supplemented the usual sweet treat displays in the glass cases. The dimly lit emporium added peppermint and coconut to its familiar complex aroma of chocolate and freshly ground coffee.

Old Mr. Zirkle himself seemed a bit cheerier, more indulgent of a young visitor with five pennies who mulled many minutes over which candies to buy. A penny could purchase a small candy cane, a licorice stick, five pieces of hard candy or a few nonpareils, those thin chocolate disks topped with pellets of hard sugar.

Fortunately, another customer -- the always-happy Mrs. Theis -- interrupted the transaction so the boy had more time to consider. Besides, he enjoyed watching the interaction between the proprietor and his lady customer. She asked for ten pounds of flour, ten pounds of sugar, a package of lard and several cans of various fruits.

Mr. Zirkle fetched each of the items from the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind the counter. All the staple goods were arranged there while the aisle through the middle was banked with the candy displays, barrels of pickles and crackers, baskets of potatoes and other winter-time vegetables. Near the back stood a pot-belly stove which glowed bright orange through its small isinglass window.

Every inch of space in the store except for the narrow central walkway was filled with boxed, bagged and canned foodstuffs. No meat or perishables were sold here -- they came from Cracker Burkholder's butcher shop a few blocks away or from home gardens in season.

To reach the dusty cans of fruit for Mrs. Theis, the old man had to use a long-handled device with metal grippers. It was always a bit precarious and the young boy held his breath to see if one of the cans would topple on Mr. Zirkle's gray head. But today, all went well. The order was packaged in two brown paper bags and Mrs. Theis, with some effort, made it out the door held open graciously by the boy.

Then it was back to decision-making. Finally, the youngster chose the nonpareils, always his favorite even in the chocolate-melting heat of summer. There was something about the way the tiny sugar pebbles dissolved slowly in his mouth into the almost bitter chocolate that salved his young anxieties. With Christmas so near, a little soothing was in order. Outside, the streets of the small town were almost deserted. An icy wind bit at the boy's ears and nose. He exhaled sharply to see the white fog of his breath. It fascinated him, some sort of testimony to his existence in a remote and unknown universe.

He carefully removed one of the candies from the tiny paper bag. It was already chilled from the winter air and released its flavors even more slowly than usual. A satisfying sensation, the boy thought.

His walk home was only a short distance, less than a block. But he decided to stroll further up the street, maybe even to where Aunt Ina lived with her plants and cats. She also had a drunken husband, but he wasn't around much at this time of the day. The boy loved the way Aunt Ina took care of her plants, now dominated by huge Christmas cactuses in full, outrageous bloom. She ministered even more strenuously to her cats, eight or nine of them, some great fat beauties and others somewhat monstrous with inbred deformities -- too many toes, patchy coats or missing limbs. Aunt Ina never distinguished between the handsome and the ugly -- they were all her beloved companions.

About half-way on his unscheduled journey, the boy noticed town workmen beginning to stretch strings of colored lights across Main Street from light pole to light pole. This, too, was much earlier than usual for Christmastime.

The youngster slowed his pace to watch the men struggle with the long strings of lights, climbing high on ladders to put them in place. The lights were nicely balanced in a red, green, blue, yellow progression. They delighted his lonely heart.

It was nearly dark by the time he reached Aunt Ina's small tidy house near the south end of town. Lights glowed invitingly from the windows. He took his usual detour to the back door, where several of the cats lounged in boxes on the porch even in the cold of winter.

He stopped short at the sound of voices. Uncle Ralph was home. He was drunk again, the boy knew. His voice roared and his curses scalded the darkening air.

The boy could hear his uncle's words even from this distance. "God damn it, woman, do you call this food? I'm not eating this slop." A crash of dishes and pans. A slap. A whimper.

The boy turned quietly and headed back to the street. Something wet touched his cheek. A snowflake. Then another, and another, and soon the white flakes fell in great masses, quickly hiding the mud-streaked sidewalk. The boy ran and slid on the thin coating of snow, almost falling a few times. He held fast to the small package of nonpareils and, remembering them suddenly, he put another into his mouth.

By the time he reached the intersection a block from his house, the snow had mantled the landscape except for the warm macadam of Main Street. It continued to fall in fluffy abundance as he crossed in front of Abby Henkel's grey stone house.

The boy stood there a moment to watch. Just then the colored lights switched on. The air overhead was aglow in red, green, blue, yellow, turning the snowflakes into millions of color-glinted crystals. The boy took in the spectacle, savoring the melding of sugar and chocolate in his mouth. This was going to be a wonderful Christmas.