Each year, Sally and I savor memories of the weeks and days leading up to Christmas and Christmas morning with our son when he was very young – the excitement, the anticipation, the sitting with him explaining and discussing the larger meaning and far more important message of Christmas and the Holidays. There is one such memory that is near and dear to my heart that I’d like to share with you because it happened to me. (Thanks for the memory Mom and Dad!) Sally and I have passed the experience and memory along to our son, Drew. Some day we hope he will have the opportunity to pass the tradition along to his children.
It has to do with the day when, as a child, you begin to realize and question and you walk up to your Mom or Dad and ask/declare with fear and trepidation – masked behind false bravado, “Mom, Dad – there isn’t really a Santa Claus is there?!?!” It is a question that each generation struggles with and asks. Mom and Dad have to answer this difficult question as best they can.
And so it was… Drew was about 9 when he came to us asking about Santa Claus – declaring there was no such person. On Christmas Eve after he went to bed, I grabbed a pair of boots, sloshed them about in the ashes in the living room fireplace…
and then walked them to the Christmas tree
and back to the fireplace.
I put the boots away and Sally and I went to bed. Christmas morning (the usual 5 AM…) we were awakened by Drew loudly exclaiming Santa had really come! Get up! You’ve got to come down stairs to see his foot prints!!!! It is a morning we will never forget.
Happy Holidays,
