Trixie Belden held her breath and glanced over her shoulder as she crept down the stairs to the kitchen. Her brothers were all sound sleepers and they’d gone to bed hours ago, so she doubted they would wake up. Her parents’ bedroom was the furthest from the kitchen, so she was pretty sure that if she could just make it downstairs, she’d be in the clear. The bottom step creaked and she had to cover her mouth to prevent a nervous giggle from escaping. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, she reminded herself. This wasn’t like last December when she had sneaked into her father’s study and discovered the stash of unwrapped presents.

Worst.

Christmas.

Ever.

No, she’d learned a valuable lesson; namely that curiosity was a good thing, but not when it came to presents. This year was completely different, though. This year, she was going to do something for her entire family. This year, she was going to start a new tradition. Humming a Christmas carol under her breath, she eased open the pantry door. It creaked, but only a little. She held her breath, but no one upstairs stirred. Fidgeting with excitement, she heaved the ten-pound bag of flour onto the kitchen table. Sugar, butter, baking powder, eggs… and most importantly, Great-Grandma Belden’s recipe book.

She flipped through the pages, squinting at the faded writing. It was a good thing Mrs. Gibson had taught them cursive last year in the third grade, Trixie realized. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to read any of the recipes. As it was, she had to squint and make a whole lot of what Mart called educated guesses. She wasn’t even entirely sure she’d found the right recipe until she saw the smudge of orange icing. Moms had helped her make pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies to take to school for the Halloween party, and there had been an… incident with the orange icing. Trixie grimaced, remembering the feel of the icing as she’d stepped in a spill of it in her sock feet. Not this time, she promised herself. Halloween had been a practice run. Those cookies hadn’t been perfect, but these ones would be. They had to be.

Carefully, just the way Moms had taught her, she turned the dial on the cast iron gas stove to preheat the oven. The gas flicked to life with a satisfying whoosh, and Trixie felt an answering warmth of happiness. The oven turning on always meant good things, and this would be no exception. Still wriggly with excitement, she dragged a kitchen chair to the counter and clambered up on it so she could reach the mixing bowls. The nested bowls were heavier than she’d realized and she had to drag them to the edge of the shelf, allowing them to drop nearly all the way to the counter before she gained control of them.

Before going to bed Mrs. Belden always set a tray of butter on the kitchen counter to soften for breakfast, and it was the perfect amount to cream with the sugar. There wouldn’t be any butter for breakfast, but that wouldn’t matter because no one would even think about breakfast when Trixie woke everyone with her surprise!

No, everyone would be so amazed and so full from the special treat she was making that they wouldn’t even want breakfast!

St. Lucia would be proud of her, Trixie decided, and began to turn the crank on the manual hand-mixer with dogged determination. It wasn’t easy and it took forever, but eventually the butter and sugar creamed together, forming a consistency that Trixie hoped was close to the same as when her mother had helped her use the electric mixer. The electric mixer might have been faster, but it was also louder. And probably St. Lucia hadn’t had an electric mixer, so it was only fair.

Even though her arm was starting to burn and it was taking a whole lot longer than she remembered…

She didn’t give up, though. If Grandma Belden and Great-Grandma Belden and Great-Great-Grandma Belden could do it, so could she. When the mixture was even fluffier than when she’d made cookies with Moms, she set down the manual beater and set to work deciphering the next part of the recipe, which consisted of… more ingredients. And more mixing.

Her arm ached at the thought.

In an effort to put off more mixing, she read through the list of ingredients, nodding as she checked to make sure that she had each of them ready. With more difficulty, she traced the instructions with her index finger, struggling to make sense of the faded cursive writing. Mix the dough, chill the dough for two to four hours, bake the cookies, make the icing, ice the cookies…

Trixie chewed her bottom lip. It was well after midnight. It wouldn’t take long to mix the dough, but it had to chill. And then she remembered it had taken her and Moms a full Saturday to make the Halloween cookies. Rolling out the chilled dough, using the cookie cutters, letting the cookies cool, making the icing… Just icing the cookies had taken over an hour! Mental math was not her friend, but even by her calculations she would be hard-pressed to finish the cookies before the rest of the Belden family woke up.

Trixie began to suspect that her plan might be flawed.

The quiver of excitement she’d felt since she first concocted the idea of honouring St. Lucia’s Day by making coffee and pastry for her family was starting to fade, only to be replaced with a gnawing certainty that her plans were about to go awry. Why, oh why, hadn’t she done a little more planning? Tomorrow, or rather, today, was St. Lucia’s Day. It wasn’t as if she could make the dough tonight and make the cookies in the morning. It wouldn’t be a surprise, then, and what would the point even be? She plunked her elbows on the kitchen table and rested her chin on her hands, trying to come up with a solution.

From his position under the table, Reddy whined in support. Or sleep. One of the two. She reached down to give him a pat, only to be greeted by his very fast, very wet tongue. “Reddy!” she scolded, giggling as she snatched her hand away. She knocked into Grandma Belden’s recipe book, sending it tumbling to the floor. It landed, pages askew, and Trixie felt a pang of guilt. It was all for a good reason, but she knew that she would have a lot of explaining to do if she damaged the family treasure. Reddy nudged it with his nose and Trixie hastily dove to retrieve it before his youthful exuberance could harm the book.

“This isn’t for you,” she told him, trying to be stern. Reddy, however, only understood that he’d gained the attention of one of his favourite people. He thumped against Trixie’s leg, causing her to teeter on one leg before flopping back to sit on the hard wooden kitchen chair. “This is the opposite of helping!” she told him but patted his head as she plunked the recipe book on the table. She started to flip through the pages, looking for the sugar cookie recipe, when she was struck by the brevity of the recipe the book had opened to.

Only three ingredients?

And two of them were already in her bowl!

She scanned the rest of the recipe, staring in disbelief at the simplicity of the instructions. This recipe was easy! With renewed enthusiasm she added flour and applied all the elbow grease she could muster to the manual mixer.

Simple, Trixie came to realize, was not the same as easy. No matter how fast and how hard she turned the crank on the mixer, the dough just wouldn’t come together the way the recipe promised it would. Reddy pressed his body against her legs in silent encouragement. It was also possible that he was just hoping to get a taste of whatever she was making, but Trixie was heartened by his support and continued to mix the dough, watching to see when it would finally come together and form a uniform consistency.

She switched between arms, ignoring the burn of her muscles. It was way worse than doing push-ups in gym class, but at least Trixie knew that there would be a positive result when she was done. When she did push-ups, all she had were sore arms. After this, she would have sore arms and cookies. It would totally be worth it, if she could just. Get. The. Dough. To. Mix!

Just when she thought that it was never going to happen and that she would be stuck turning the crank on the mixer until the rest of the family came down for breakfast, the dough, in the space of a few seconds, formed the consistency that the recipe called for. Trixie sat down hard on the chair and didn’t even flinch when Reddy slobbered all over her hand. Encouraged, he planted his front legs on Trixie’s lap and gave her face a lick for good measure.

Trixie recovered enough to push him away, though she thought her arms might fall off in the process. “Thanks for keeping me company, Reddy,” she whispered, and Reddy woofed softly in response. She pushed herself to her feet and washed her hands, only wincing a little at the dull ache in her biceps.

No pain, no St. Lucia’s Day, after all.

The rest of the process was easy. She shaped the dough into balls, pressed them down with a fork, and slid the cookie sheet into the oven. Even better, she even remembered to set the timer. She knew that she ought to start washing the mixing bowl and putting away the baking ingredients, but it couldn’t hurt if she just sat down for a minute, could it?

Setting the kitchen timer on the table, she sat down and rested her head on her hands. She wasn’t going to fall asleep, of course. That would be silly. But resting her eyes until the timer went off would be a good use of her time! That way she’d be wide awake and ready to clean up the kitchen as soon as she took the cookies out of the oven.

Even Reddy signalled his approval by shuffling back to his spot under the table and lying down on her feet. Trixie took a deep breath, satisfied that she would be successful in celebrating St. Lucia’s Day. It could be the start of a new tradition for the Belden family! Even Mart would be thrilled, because it involved food! With visions of her family’s happiness and approval dancing through her head, she felt the tension drain from her body.

“Trixie.”

Trixie frowned and kept her eyes tightly closed.

“Trixie.” A gentle hand squeezed her shoulder, but she was sure it wasn’t time to get up yet. It couldn’t be.

“Trixie.”

Trixie tried to pull the covers over her head, but try as she might, she couldn’t find them. “Did Moms burn the pancakes?” she asked, confused by the smell penetrating her sleepy haze.

“No,” her father said, sounding amused. “She didn’t. I thought you might be able to tell me what happened.”

Trixie struggled to open her eyes. Why were they so heavy? She didn’t usually have such a hard time waking up. Especially not on St. Lucia’s Day when she was supposed to— “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, bolting upright and nearly butting heads with her father. “I fell asleep!” she wailed.

“I can see that,” Mr. Belden said.

In the stark light of the early morning, the kitchen looked worse than she’d realized. And the smell!

“The cookies!” she gasped, and turned to look at the stove. The oven door stood open, the charred remains of her shortbread cookies smoking inside it.

She stared, gaping in horror. “I set the timer! Honest!”

Mr. Belden picked up the timer from the kitchen table. “This timer?”

She nodded.

“It was still beeping when I came downstairs,” he told her. “I could barely hear it, though. I think the batteries are wearing out.”

Trixie wanted to glare at the tiny appliance that had failed her, but instead, her blue eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to surprise everyone,” she said, her throat constricting.

“By baking cookies in the middle of the night?” he asked, sounding confused.

“For St. Lucia’s Day,” Trixie explained.

“For St. Lucia’s Day,” he repeated, still sounding confused.

“Don’t you know about it?” Trixie asked, forgetting her disappointment for a minute. “St. Lucia’s Day is when the oldest daughter in the family dresses in white and serves coffee and pastry to the rest of the family.”

She’d thought her explanation made complete sense, but her father didn’t look any less confused.

“I think I’m supposed to wear a wreath with candles on my head,” she continued, “but I couldn’t find a wreath and I didn’t want to burn the house down.”

If anything, he looked more confused.

“Look!” Trixie demanded, pulling out a picture from the pocket of her house coat. “See?” she asked, shoving the old black and white photograph toward him.

Mr. Belden took the picture and studied it carefully. His expression softened and Trixie thought that maybe he finally understood.

“This must have been taken after your Aunt Alicia went away to school,” he said. “Otherwise she would have been the oldest daughter.”

He did understand! “Moms said it was one of her favourite memories. She made scones and served them to her parents and it sounded perfect!” Trixie beamed as she remembered how happy Moms had sounded when she’d told her the story. And then her face fell when she realized how badly she’d bungled her own attempt at St. Lucia’s Day.

“Coffee and pastries, you say?” he asked thoughtfully.

Trixie nodded dismally. “I thought cookies would be close enough. And I was going to figure out the coffee maker this morning.”

Trixie was surprised to see an odd expression flash across her father’s face. Was he glad she’d fallen asleep before starting on the coffee? She couldn’t imagine why. If she could make cookies without the use of an electric mixer, she was pretty sure she could manage making coffee. “I have an idea,” he told her. “But we’ll have to be fast. Everyone will be waking up soon.”

Trixie stood next to her father and watched as he measured grounds and turned on the coffee maker. She didn’t like coffee in the slightest, but this cold December morning as the sun crept above the horizon, the aroma was pure magic.

“I dropped in at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s on bank business yesterday,” Mr. Belden said. “And she sent along a treat. I was going to save it for after Brian and Mart shoveled the driveway, but…”

Trixie squealed with delight. She didn’t have to ask what Mrs. Vanderpoel had sent; all of her baking was incredible.

“Windmill cookies?” she guessed, unable to curb her curiosity.

“Even better,” Mr. Belden assured her.

Trixie waited, but her father could be just as patient as she was im patient. With a secretive smile and a finger to his lips, he opened a kitchen cabinet door and reached around the corner on the top shelf to a spot Trixie hadn’t ever noticed before. He pulled out a small cardboard box and opened the lid to reveal the treasure inside.

“Strudel!” Trixie breathed.

“Made with crab apples from our very own trees,” Peter told her.

Trixie leaned in close to enjoy the fragrant aroma. “They’re perfect!”

“We have a few minutes before the coffee is ready,” he said. “Why don’t we see how much of the kitchen we can tidy?”

Trixie and Reddy ran around the kitchen returning ingredients to their proper places while Peter disposed of the cookie-shaped lumps of charcoal from the oven and washed the dirty dishes. What had seemed like an insurmountable task during the night barely even qualified as a chore now that Trixie knew St. Lucia’s Day hadn’t been ruined.

It was a good thing that Aunt Alicia had given her a long white nightgown for Christmas last year, Trixie thought, nearly tripping on the hem as she climbed the steps. For some reason, it had been the only piece of white clothing in her closet. And she might not be wearing a wreath with candles, but Mr. Belden had placed two candles on the coffee tray he carried, and he’d even let her light them.

When they reached the master bedroom Trixie nudged open the door, so excited that she practically vibrated. “Happy St. Lucia’s Day!” she called, and giggled when her mother blinked sleepily in response.

“What a lovely surprise!” she exclaimed, and sat up in bed.

“It’s coffee and pastries,” Trixie explained, just in case there was any confusion. She balanced the tray of pastries on the foot of the bed and then clambered in under the covers with her mother. She could hear Brian and Mart in the hallway, woken no doubt by the mention of food. Two-year-old Bobby toddled in, heading straight for the pastries while Mr. Belden set the coffee on the chest of drawers, out of the youngster’s reach. Trixie giggled at the chaos and snuggled closer to her mother. St. Lucia’s Day might not have turned out exactly as she’d intended it, but there wasn’t a thing she would have changed, either.