It was another wonderful Christmas Eve and our three young children were excited about the imminent arrival of the man in red, with the exception of our son who had flatly refused to believe any longer in the myth of the deer, the sleigh, the jolly fat man….and well, you know the rest.  The only reason he hadn’t broadcast it to the world was his fear that somehow it might screw up his gift-getting and  he certainly didn’t want to do that.  He kept it to himself so when I announced that we’d be taking our usual Christmas Eve ride to view decorated yards, he smirked but said not a word.

We ate an early dinner, gave the kitchen a lick and a promise and headed out to the car that Dad was warming up.  True to form, as we were pulling out of the driveway, I said I had forgotten my glasses and needed to go back inside the house and find them.  Our son rolled his eyes and thought, but did not say, “not again,” remembering the year before and the one before that when one of his parents had to return to the house for some reason or other.  “Here we go again,” he muttered, but very quietly,  then sat back to wait patiently the 15 or 20 minutes it would take for the miraculous “aha” moment when the search would be over and the parent would reappear.  On the eves toy assembly was necessary it was always Dad who forgot and had to go back in.

Once inside the parent would scramble like a madman, or woman, gathering gifts from cellar to attic, putting them under the tree.  A plate of cookies had to be either eaten or put back in the cookie jar and the milk poured back into the container from whence it came, the carton, not the cow.  Lights on the tree were plugged into the outlet and the scene was set.

Outside again whoever had been inside held up the “found” item with a smile for the children to see.  All is well, the car is now warm and two little girls are giddy with excitement.  Our son has almost fallen asleep. We back the car out into the street which is now covered with new fallen snow.  It will be another white magical evening and I have a moment of nostalgia wishing I once again could feel the same overpowering enchantment I experienced as a small child…the fascination with the Christmas carols, the bright lights, the smell  of pine needles and the wonder of falling snow….all of it. Large snowflakes were coming  down heavily now, and we were driving slowly down our street.  Suddenly Dad gasped and slowed the car to a stop and we watched in awe as Santa Clause crossed in front of us, walking slowly under the burden of a large sack flung over his shoulder.  Our son said not one word; the girls were shrilly screaming, “It’s him, it’s him”…two adults were in shock.  I wondered aloud in a typical Dumb Dora fashion, “I wonder where he left his sleigh, probably in the park where he could land in the ball field.”  I added, “Well, we can’t go home for while, we’d just be in his way and he has many stops to make tonight.”  No one responded.  With that we drove on in search of homes all decorated just for the jolly old boy.

Back then Addison was a small farm community revitalized by hundreds of new homes filled with young couples and small children so there were very few extravagantly decorated homes to see.  We drove to other nearby towns and ooohed and aaahed over  our fortuitous sighting of Santa.  Just think, we saw him in person, a real live walking person….right on our street, near our house.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  I must admit the two jaded adults in our car were almost as overcome as the children.  The children were very quiet in that back seat, especially the son.  When we arrived home two hours later they scrambled to be first to reach the back porch.  Inside they discovered that, indeed, Santa had been there in our absence.  He had never let them down and they now felt a special closeness to him.  We all finally made it to bed, later than usual, suffused with memories that would stay with us the rest of our lives.

The next morning a neighbor phoned to tell me they had celebrated Christmas Eve with a special Santa Clause they had hired to visit their house and hand out gifts to their children.  There was a moment of stunned silence while I digested that bit of disturbing information. We had seen a HIRED Santa, not a REAL Santa.  I so wanted him to be real, I was READY for him to be real, to re-spark my belief in magic, to take me back to the child I once was, to allow me to again see the world through my children’s eyes, not those of an adult for whom Christmas had lost its sparkle.  I was silent for a moment while my mind accepted the reality of what I had really seen, not what I thought I had seen.  I wished the caller a Merry Christmas then it all became so clear to me.  The magic I sought was not gone, it lived on in my little ones and, some day, in their little ones, and so on into eternity.   It was still there, just a little blurred for adults. To all of you I send my sincerest best wishes with a resounding Ho, Ho, Ho.