Peace on Earth
It is nearly 1am on the morning of Christmas Eve. Everything I needed to do, has been done. Steve will be getting up for work in a few hours, but once he gets home this evening, he’ll be off for a week.
I had to pick up a few things at the commissary today (or should I say yesterday), and thought for sure it would be crowded. Thankfully, I was wrong. The bagger who loaded my groceries into the car, told me that the early part of the week was much more hectic. I was in and out of the store in less than an hour.
On the way home (about 1pm), I enjoyed the orange glow of the sky as the sun hugged the horizon on its way down. I stopped at the golf course on post and took these photos of the afternoon sky:
It looks like we’re not going to drive around town looking at Christmas lights, until after dinner on Christmas Day. Steve doesn’t want to go out again tomorrow night, after a long day at work - which is understandable. As long as we do our ’sightseeing’ before this weekend! The weather service is calling for bone-chilling cold to settle over us by Sunday. When I see HIGHS of -30F, I’m not about to leave my warm cocoon of a house.
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Today, I spent some time reminiscing about Christmas past. A friend of mine had blogged that her son was questioning whether or not Santa Claus was real. He’s 8. It made me think about my childhood, and Christmas Eve when I did believe in Santa Claus. I have three younger brothers. The four of us were born within 5 years, so we’re very close in age.
On Christmas Eve, we used to push the two twin beds together in the boys room and make one huge bed. All four of us would sleep together in anticipation of Christmas morning and finding presents under the tree.
Of course, when there are four kids in one bed, there is going to be a lot of chatter and laughter. I can’t tell you how many times my dad would come in and tell us to quiet down or Santa wasn’t coming. We really did try to fall asleep, but we couldn’t. Sometimes it felt like hours before we drifted off.
One year, we heard sleigh bells ringing! We just knew it had to be Santa’s sleigh. Mom came into the bedroom to check on us and we told her we heard bells. She told us that Santa had flown over, but knew were still awake, so he went to other kids’ houses who were asleep. I think we all squeezed our eyes tight, trying to fake sleep. But there’s no pulling the wool over Santa’s eyes! *grin* I later realized the sleigh bells were actually the bells that we had hanging on our front door. My parents almost always had a Christmas Eve gathering and the bells would ring everytime some arrived.
I don’t think I stopped believing in Santa until I was about 10. But even though I was enlightened as to his existence, I kept the spirit of Santa alive for my brothers - especially my brother Marc (the baby). Unfortunately, once my brother Mike found out that Mom and Dad played a big part in what showed up under the tree, he couldn’t wait to share his knowledge with the others.
I don’t remember when my kids stopped believing in Santa Claus. They were probably younger than I was. It didn’t matter if they believed or not; there were always packages under the tree “from Santa”. And Santa continued to leave them packages until they grew up and left home. He’ll always live in our memories.
If you’ve got little ones at home, you can track Santa with them via the Norad site. There’s a kid’s countdown on the site, as well as other updates as to the progress being made in preparation for the big trip around the world. Check it out HERE.
Until next time…
