Christmas decorations adorned both homes and shops everywhere and I could smell Christmas in the air. Everyone seemed to be just a little bit more polite and you could even catch a smile or two from normally grumpy adults. Us kids had no reservations about how to feel because the closer we got to Christmas the more exciting every day became.  But there was no snow on the ground yet except for some wet flurries and nothing was sticking.

Without snow the city streets were wet and dirty and walking to school was barely tolerable as the cold damp wind cut me to the bone even though it wasn't freezing yet. The sidewalks are damp and as I pass in front of the soda shop I can smell the sickly sweet smell of all the discarded bubble gum on the sidewalk.

The air is heavy with the exhaust from buses as they stop at each corner and then as they accelerate away and leave a plume of diesel smoke behind. I try to hold my breath long enough for the smoke to pass but I always seem to fail.

I could be miserable but I can smell that Christmas is coming soon so none of that mattered.

Like all kids I always wanted my father's attention but he worked very hard with long hours so us kids didn't get to spend a lot of time with him. So I was surprised one evening when my father asked me to help him with something outside. I grabbed my coat and followed him out the back door. "Give me a hand with these" he said as he reached for the garbage cans and grabbed the handles and started to drag two of them out of the garage. I was really surprised because my father never asked me to help him with anything and now he was asking me to help him take the garbage cans to the curb and I was delighted. 

In the 1960s there was, if you can believe it, very little plastic in our world. There were no plastic garbage cans or even plastic bags to put garbage in. We would use the paper bags from the grocery store that we folded the top over into a cuff so it would stay upright and open. Anything wet like vegetable peelings would go into a coffee can. Taking out the garbage meant that we took the paper bag out from under the sink and then poured the wet stuff into the top of the bag and then put that into the garbage can outside.

Being a family of six we had four metal garbage cans and this night they were all filled to the brim. My father grabbed two garbage cans by their handles and then looked at me and asked me to grab the handle of one to help him and I did so readily. It was much heavier than I expected and as we walked them down the long driveway to the curb the metal handle began to hurt and cut into my hand but there was no way I was going to let go and disappoint my dad. So I grabbed the handle with both hands and struggled the whole way until we got to the curb and dropped them there.

My dad turned and headed back to the garage and said "come on there's two more left" and I ran to catch up with him. He grabbed the two other garbage cans and I grabbed the handle of one to help. As we headed down the driveway I realized that even though this can was as full as the last one it wasn't as heavy so I didn't have to struggle as much as I did before. It was at that moment I realized that my father was carrying the other can with one hand as he had done with the one before. I also realized that he was carrying more of the weight of the one I was helping him with and when I looked up at him I could see a little grin on his face.

As a kid you become much more aware of the calendar as you count down the days to Christmas and the closer it gets you find yourself even watching the clock as it seemed each day was dragging on longer than the day before. But this year was different for me, I was 12 years old and something was nagging at me, something I couldn't put my finger on but there was something different about this Christmas.

It didn't seem like it was ever going to snow, there were some false starts with flurries that seem to stick but then in a couple hours it was all gone. I was hoping for snow for Christmas but it looked like I was going to be disappointed because Christmas was only a couple of days away and to add insult to injury it even rained one day and everything turned to ice. 

As I awoke on Christmas Eve morning I could feel the excitement in the air but I didn't want to get out of bed yet. I was toasty warm under my blankets and everything felt just too perfect to move. I had positioned an extra pillow over my head to keep the top of my head warm while also making a little slit to see and breathe out of and it was still in place and hadn't fallen off. I leaned forward and took a deep breath and I could immediately feel that the room was chilly and my decision to stay in bed was the right one until I looked up at the windows

Something wasn't right, my room was on the second floor and one of the benefits of that was I could look out the windows from my bed and see the trees. Now I couldn't see anything outside the windows and it was as if there was a fog or something. I thought maybe it was my eyes and I reached under the covers to the side and grabbed my glasses from night stand. I carefully put my glasses on being sure to not disturb the pillow on my head but that didn't help as even with my glasses the windows were still obscured. I kept staring at the windows and I was getting frustrated because I could not figure out why I couldn't see out the windows.

I couldn't put it off any longer so I began the process of getting out of bed. Transitioning from a toasty warm bed into a teeth chattering ice cold room required a certain finesse. I had my flannel pajamas on and before I went to bed I usually positioned my corduroy slippers next to the bed in the perfect position to get my feet into them quickly and then put on my robe which was on the chair right next to the window.

Not today because as I slipped my right foot out the side of the bed and down to where the slippers should be my foot landed on the ice cold wooden floor because apparently I had forgotten to put the slippers in their spot the night before. All bets were off as I threw off all my covers and jumped out of bed and then danced on the cold wooden floor searching for my slippers that for some reason had found their way under the bed. And then spinning in place until I finally located my robe on the door handle and put it on and immediately jumped back into bed and covered myself with the blankets to wait until the chilled robe and slippers warmed up.

Finally I was able to exit the bed slightly warmer and then walked over to the windows. Probably the only benefit of having a single pane window without storm windows in the winter, is window Frost. As a kid it's almost like validation that there is a real Jack Frost and that he personally painted your windows the night before. Even though my room was not much warmer than outside until the heat came on, frost on the windows is one of my most favorite things. To me the frost was like magic that would allow me to daydream without reservation as I would stare into the endless ice patterns and imagine that somewhere there was a world built of nothing but Frost.

As I stood there daydreaming all of a sudden I realized that there was something wrong or I should say right, because I still couldn't see the trees and it took an inordinate amount of time for me to realize that the reason I couldn't see the trees was because of the snow. 

It was snowing and it wasn't just flurries, it was a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. There was so much snow coming down and swirling in front of the windows I couldn't see the trees. I couldn't even see the street in front of the house. The roof in front of the windows was covered in snow and it was probably five or six inches deep. I opened my bedroom door and I could hear my brothers downstairs yelling to everyone "it's snowing" as they ran out the front door and onto the porch followed by my mom yelling "get back in here and get some clothes on" as a gust of wind slammed the front door open and the cold air raced up the stairs and hit me in the face.

I could really smell it now, Christmas was getting closer.

Everybody was up out of bed and we all ended up in the front room where the Christmas tree was standing. Our tradition was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve and we had already put the lights up and a few ornaments so we all began to beg "can we put the ornaments on now?" But my mom was practical and insisted we all get dressed and have breakfast first.

After getting dressed and having a wonderful breakfast we all suddenly remembered that there was a snowstorm outside and It didn't take more than a few seconds for us to forget that we wanted to decorate the tree and we all ran outside to play in the snow. Everything was covered in about 7 to 8 inches of snow and it was magical. We tried to make a snowman but the snow was just too dry for that or even snowballs. But it didn't matter and we spent as much time outside as we could dancing in the snow until the cold was too much and we had to run back inside to warm up.

On Christmas Eve there are no expectations of what you should be doing, no chores, no pressure to finish your homework and if you wanted, you could do nothing at all and it would be all right. So we all just watched some Christmas TV specials, ate Christmas cookies other treats my mother had made, ran in and out of the house to play briefly in the snow again and again and just enjoyed the day and our family being together. 

My mom decided that we should decorate the tree after dinner so we had an early dinner and together we unboxed the ornaments and took turns placing them on the tree. My mother had a collection of antique ornaments and they were very special to us all and we took great care in placing them on the tree. As the tree was filled with ornaments it became a familiar thing to us because those ornaments were not just memories but the joy of of every Christmas past brought to life for us all. The more ornaments we added to the tree the more it seemed to create a warmth among us all. But once the ornament boxes were empty, we knew what was coming next. 

The last thing we put on the tree was tinsel and we considered the application of tinsel a sort of sport for our family because it wasn't just placed on the tree. The '60s may not have had a lot of plastic but we had something you will never be able to find again, lead tinsel. It wasn't totally banned until 1972 but at the time in the 1960s we had boxes of the stuff that we saved from the year before.

When the tinseling began all of us would grab a box or two and then take a small handful of the tinsel and from about 4 to 5 ft out from the tree we would toss it in an arc towards the tree. It was magnificent because lead of course has some heft to it so it would fly through the air with such grace and land on the tree in the most wonderful way creating tinsel icicles that covered the tree. I have to admit that some of us got carried away and we would toss it not only at the tree but at each other.

As the evening came we all began to relax in front of the tree. My mother turned the room lights off and then plugged in the Christmas tree lights and pulled back the curtains on the front windows. It was still snowing and the street lights were illuminating both the trees outside and the swirling snow so that it became the background for our Christmas tree and on that day my mother created one of the most magical images in my life that I can still see in my minds eye to this day.

My brothers, tired from all the running in and out of the house to play in the snow were wearing down quickly so my father took them one at a time up to their rooms and put them to bed. My sister kept looking at my mother and father and I think she knew something was up but as she was trying to extend the evening her half lidded eyes betrayed her and eventually she fell asleep on the sofa. My father carried her to her room and put her to bed and when he came down he was looking at me. I wasn't tired and I was hoping to maybe watch some TV but then he said something that at first I didn't understand. "I need your help with something, get your coat."

"What?" was the only thing I could muster and as he walked pass me towards the front door he replied "come on let's go"

So I jumped up and went to the coat rack and as I bundled up in my coat, hat, and gloves my mom grabbed my scarf and wrapped it around my neck and then covered my nose with it and then watched as I followed my father out the door. My father walked back to the garage and I was thinking that the garbage doesn't go out tonight because it's Christmas Eve so I had no idea what he was doing. He opened the side door in the garage and reached in and pulled out our sled, placed it on the snow covered ground and started pulling it with the rope.

I still had no idea what was going on but I followed him out of the driveway and down the sidewalk. There was only room for single file with all the shoveled snow on either side of the sidewalk so I trailed behind him until we got to the avenue where the sidewalks had been cleared more and I began to walk beside him. I didn't know if I should ask him what was going on and when I looked up at him he had this strange look on his face so I just kept walking. 

The snow was still falling and as it swirled around us it was so quiet that I could actually hear it as it landed on the ground. The streets hadn't been plowed so that when this one car passed us it was silent like a reindeer sleigh and the tires were making this wonderful crunching sound as they slowly rolled through the dry snow. There was so much snow falling that you could not see further than the next streetlight and the light from them and the Christmas decorations made it seem as if were inside a giant Christmas snow globe.

It was like the whole world was asleep under a blanket of snow and we didn't see another car or person for the rest of the night.

We walked about three blocks and then he turned onto a street and crossed to the other side and then at the 4th or 5th house we stopped. Without saying a word my father climbed the stairs and I heard him take keys out and open the front door. Then I knew what this was, this is the new house we were moving into but I hadn't seen it yet. When I looked up he waved for me to come inside. He turned on the front hallway light and then walked into another room as I walked up the stairs and into the front hallway and then stood there waiting and trying to figure out why we were here. 

At first I didn't understand what I was looking at as he came out of the other room carrying what looked like a wrapped present. As he passed me he said "grab some of those presents and help me bring them out to the sleigh"

I walked into the other room and there in the center of the room was a pile of wrapped presents. I picked one up and looked at it and it was beautifully wrapped with a bow and a decorative tag. I read the handwritten message on the tag and it said "To Linda, From Santa." I put it down and quickly picked up another and it said "To Craig, From Santa."

I was stunned, all these packages were from Santa Claus and I just stood there in a daze until the fog of youth cleared away and I realized that this is what had been nagging at me. This is what is different about this Christmas because it was something I was about to learn about Santa Claus that I already knew but had yet to say it out loud.

I picked up another package and this one was addressed to my brother Denis and as I stared at the handwriting it was as if blinders were removed from my eyes and I recognized the handwriting, it was my mother's. She had the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen and I never knew it was her who signed Santa's name until that very moment. 

I finally said the words out loud, "My parents are Santa Claus". I stood in front of the presents giggling like an idiot as my father came back in and said "come on we got to get back and put these under the Christmas tree"

I never felt so happy in my life because I found out that my parents are Santa Claus and tonight I get to be Santa Claus too.

I grabbed some presents and took them out to the sleigh and together my father and I stacked them one on top of the other. My father had some twine with him that he used to tie the presents down to the sleigh.  All the while I'm jabbering about Santa Claus, and how that I kind of knew what was up, but I wasn't sure, and that this is so exciting. I just couldn't stop talking about it as my father locked the front door and then we took the rope and together pulled the sleigh down the street back towards home.

It was still snowing hard and as we got to the end of the street I stopped for a moment and turned and looked back. In all the swirling snow I saw a car by itself, it's trunk covered with fresh snow like a canvas a foot deep that I walked over to and with my finger I wrote "Santa Was Here". I turned back to my father who was smiling at me and said "That's for the little kids when they wake up tomorrow".

On that night standing next to my father in a whirlwind of snow pulling a sleigh full of Christmas presents home, I learned about the joy of giving when I realized that I too can be Santa Clause. 

You never know how much your parents love you until you find out they are Santa Claus and that they are the real Father and Mother Christmas.

Merry Christmas

From Santa