“Of all the millions of people in New York, I am practically the only one who has to get up in the cold black of 6 AM. on Christmas Day in the morning; I am practically the only one.”
Charlie is the focal character of the story and this quote ends the first opening paragraph. These unspoken thoughts by Charlie are the stimulus behind the events which subsequently take place. Charlie is stuck in a job he hates and the circumstances of employment are taking its toll. Although very definitely a Christmas story, at another level this is also a story about economic inequality. Although elevator operation really only had one requirement—that the building be tall enough to warrant the expense—by the late 1940’s in which the story is set, they had already become mostly relegated to properties occupied by wealthier tenants. This is very much the case with Charlie. Therefore, his complain about having get up when everybody else is asleep already situates him as someone who bases his content with life primarily through comparisons with other. Add to this propensity the fact that the tenants Charlies transports up and own all day are significant better off than himself and the events of this particular Christmas Day almost seem inevitable.
“And when it came Christmas morning, how could you explain it, how could you tell them that Santa Claus only visited the rich, that he didn't know about the good? How could you face them when all you had to give them was a balloon or a lollipop?”
Cheever is being very sly with this story by situating it as a Christmas tale. Christmas Day is literally when the story takes place, but the subtext is about the other 364 days of the year. Charlie’s thoughts here explicitly address the dark side of the holiday. Although a time for joyous celebration and gift-exchanging, Christmas is also fundamentally the single most iconic symbol of the economic inequality in a capitalist system. The richest kids who already have the most get even more. The poorest kids who already have the least get little if anything. Charlie’s thoughts about seeing what he assumes are kids who will be experiencing a disappointing Christmas party inspire his questionable decisions to lie about his circumstances and exploit the guilt of the wealthier tenants of the building in which he works into showering him with gifts. His own guilt will then serve to inspire his own seemingly charitable acts.
“Now, the landlady's children had already received so many presents by the time Charlie arrived that they were confused with receiving, and it was only the landlady's intuitive grasp of the nature of charity that made her allow the children to open some of the presents while Charlie was still in the room, but as soon as he had gone, she stood between the children and the presents that were still unopened.”
Christmas-themed fiction started taking a strange turn around the middle of the 20th century. Previously, most stories focused on altruism as the true “spirit of Christmas” and those willing to give the most received the most adulation. And then something curious begin to filter into these stories and gradually the “spirit of Christmas” became suspect. Charlie’s lies about his horrible family circumstances has turned out to be just the thing to turn his Christmas around. Suddenly, he is overcome with the bounty of charity. Then he goes too far and is fired from his job and suddenly the guilt over what he assumes are poor kids suffering their own disappointing Christmas overwhelms him. As a result, he turns into a cut-rate Santa himself and shares the dubiously acquired wealth with others, including his landlady. As it turns out, however, Charlie has been wrong all along about these particular kids. They have not been disappointed because there have been others like Charlie moved to charitable acts. This is why the landlady has developed her "intuitive grasp of the nature of charity.” Because her children have been depending upon it for so long in order to not have miserable Christmas. And she, in turn, does as Charlie tries to do. Those unopened presents will go to even less fortunate children. This series of events presents charitable actions as a cycle that is not entirely dependent upon purely altruistic motives. The reason that the neediest kids in the story will wind up having a better Christmas is due to chain of events that includes fraud and guilt is foundationally built up economic inequality.
