“On Christmas Eve, many years ago, I lay quietly in my bed. I did not rustle the sheets. I breathed slowly and silently. I was listening for a sound — a sound a friend had told me I’d never hear — the ringing bells of Santa’s sleigh.”
The story opens on a scene that many readers will be able to relate to as they recall their own memories of childhood. The accompanying illustration features soft muted colors and is bathed in what is almost a sepia tone. It becomes immediately apparent that this is a Christmas tale that is not going to ply the trade of hip irony but will seek to make a connection with readers through sincere nostalgia fueled by memories of youth. The subject of this opening scene is also universalized to a point: desperately trying to stay awake long enough to actually hear proof of the existence of Santa and his flying reindeer. Of course, there is always at least one doubter who is insistent upon deconstruction the myth purely for the selfish purpose of being proven right. But the desire for myth continues to outweigh rational logic even well into adulthood. For many people, in fact, the urge to believe the impossible contravenes all proffered evidence. But this is a story about childish wonder, not conspiratorial paranoia.
“The train was filled other children, all in their pajamas and nightgowns. We sang Christmas carols and ate candies with nougat centers as white as snow. We drank hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars. Outside, the lights of towns and villages flickered in the distance as the Polar Express raced northward.”
As it turns out, the narrator does actually hear sounds, but not the bells of Santa’s sleigh. It is instead a train that arrives. It is significant that the train contains other kids and it is even more significant that these other kids are joyously engaging with traditional elements of Christmas celebrations such as singing carols, eating nougat candies, and drinking warm cocoa. The only awareness of adults and even other kids is the flicking of town lights off in the distance. It is not explicitly stated, but there is allusive foreshadowing to what unites and bonds these particular children aboard the Polar Express together. Just before the train’s arrival, the narrator relates how an unidentified friend flat-out told him that there is no Santa. The narrator doesn’t say it out loud but thinks to himself and shares with the reader his response that he knew his friend was wrong. Not that he thought his friend was wrong but that he knew it. It is merely a subtext hinted at by this early point in the story, but the suggestion is strongly implied that the Polar Express is a train reserved exclusively for those who can see it and only those who believe it exists are capable of seeing it.
“We pressed through the crowd to the edge of a large, open circle. In front of us stood Santa’s sleigh. The reindeer were excited. They pranced and paced, ringing the silver sleigh bells that hung from their harnesses. It was a magical sound, like nothing I’d ever heard.”
Eventually, it turns out that the opening scene meant more than it at first seems. The narrator was lying in bed waiting to hear the sound of Santa’s sleigh arrival, but it was not the sound of reindeer hooves tap dancing on the roof as it lands. It is not even the sound of rustling in the chimney that helps to prove one of the hardest parts of the Santa argument to buy. He quite specifically is lying silent in bed on Christmas Eve trying to hear the sound of those bells on Santa’s sleigh. But it is not in bed that the sound arrives. It is right there at the North Pole with the big guy himself and the elves and those amazing flying deer. And when he finally hears that sound he has been waiting years to hear, it is a sweeter sound than he ever thought possible. It is a sound that he never imagined could actually be heard and that description turns out to be more significant than it seems at first as well. This moment is the turning point of the story and the magic of a bell that creates a sound that hardly even seems possible to make will become the centerpiece of the whole fantastical tale. The bells will prove to be even more essential and meaningful than the Polar Express itself because, by the end, the story offers an explanation for why this magical sound cannot be heard by everybody.
