Creeping up on Santa

When Santa came to our home on Christmas Eve, he had a very busy night. Santa not only delivered our presents, but he also decorated our entire house with Christmas ribbons, candles, stuffed animals, ornaments, wreaths, boughs of holly … and brought us a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

My little brother, Rick, and I, as was our tradition, placed our brick hearth cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer, then glanced one last time around our living room. There were no signs of the Christmas season to be seen anywhere in the house. Mom and Dad tucked us into bed, and, as we started to drift off to sleep, our imaginations were filled with visions of the Christmas scene we would awake to in the morning.

But this year would be different. This Christmas we were going to see for ourselves how Santa worked his holiday magic in our home. My brother and I lay awake in bed until we were sure Mom and Dad were fast asleep. We then slipped quietly out of our beds, and began a stealthy crawl from our bedroom to the living room. We crept all the way to the dining room, stopping just short of the entrance to the living room.

The house was dark, except for the lights in our living room. We were puzzled by the noises we heard coming from the living room. We could hear squeaky sounds, rustling sounds, hushed whispers, snipping sounds, sounds of tinkling and clinking glass, and crinkling paper sounds, to name just a few. Could Santa be at work just around the corner at this very moment?

We decided to lay still and listen quietly for a few minutes, and then we would venture to peek around the corner for a glimpse of Santa at work. We lay still just a bit too long, fell fast asleep on the dining room floor, and awoke the next morning in our beds. It was as if our adventure was just a dream.

We bolted from our beds, raced to the living room, and were fascinated by our beautifully decorated home, the lighted Christmas tree and the piles of presents that lay under the Christmas tree. Santa had come once again and transformed our home into a Christmas wonderland.