SS #90 - Holiday Memories

Any time someone asks me to remember a "holiday memory", or mentions the phrase "the magic of Christmas", it always comes back to me, and brings a smile to my face.

I was a child, probably about seven years old, and it was Christmas Eve. We were spending Christmas with my godparents in Welsford, and it was snowing. Then, as now, I was having trouble sleeping, literally shaking with excitement. My younger sister lay beside me in the pull-out bed, snoring softly, and I was staring at the ceiling, trying to will away the night so that it would be time to get up.

"Our room" was the sun porch which, over the years, had been winterized and integrated as part of the house. Five tall windows took up two of the walls, and I could see the snowflakes coming down in the light in the schoolyard across the road. I tried counting them, hoping that snowflakes would work as well as I'd heard sheep would, and gradually I drifted off.

I began dreaming of Santa and his sleigh. I dreamt I could hear them on the roof, the jingling of the bells. I snapped awake and was amazed I could still hear them, the metallic tinkling faint but distinctive. And I froze.

What if it were true? What if Santa were in the next room? Would I get in trouble for going to look? Would he give me coal for doing that? Terrified of making Santa mad, I did not move until the bells, which only lasted a few seconds, had long faded away.

The next morning I told my mother what I'd heard and she scolded me for lying on Christmas morning. And now, looking back on it with adult perspective, I think what I might've heard was not bells, but the jingling of the chains on the tires of the salt trucks as they made the roads safe in the snow.

But I still remember that thrill of excitement mixed with sheer terror.

And part of me still believes in Santa Claus.