The Night Before Christmas

Every year we would go to Grandma's for Christmas Eve.  There was no river to cross but our trip did take us past the family sawmill and up the hill through the woods to Grandma's house.  I was told it was tradition for Santa to decorate the Christmas tree as well as bringing presents.  That was not the tradition at home, only at Grandma's, but I never really saw a problem with that.  When we arrived, the door to the living room would be closed tight in waiting for Santa to come and deck it out.  As the adults finished up getting dinner onto the table, my sister and I would lay flat on the floor trying to see through the thin crack under the door.

I never remember there being a specific main course we would have every Christmas eve dinner.  There was turkey or maybe chicken and probably a ham a year or two.  There was sometimes fish, though I never really got the hang of fish until I was older.  There might have even been a lasagna one year if it struck Grandma's fancy.  In later years, when we had all aged out of Santa we even had picnics with potato salad and hotdog cooked in the fireplace.  But when we were little the dinner did not really matter.  The food was always good but that part of the night was for the adults. 

Grandpa would sit at the head of the table and my dad would sit at the foot and the rest of us would pack in around the sides.  Sometimes it was just the seven of us – my grandparents, parents, sister, brother and me.  Other times my aunt and uncle and two cousins were there too.  We kids would eat quickly and wait impatiently as the grownups chatted and laughed and seemed to ignore the torture of our wait.

Eventually, the adults must have taken as much fidgeting and whining as they could stand.  Grandma would start clearing the table and my siblings and cousins and I would take off like a stampeding herd, racing hand and foot up the ugly green-carpeted stairs to my grandparents' bedroom.  We would clamor for a good spot on Grandma's hope chest with its faux leopard skin drape that sat under the large window.  There we would fall silent, pressing our ears and foreheads against the glass to wait for the first sound and perhaps even a sight of Santa or his team.  We clung to each other in giddiness, giggling in quiet, breathless gasps of anticipation.  I remember my oldest cousin, far too old to actually believe anymore, encouraging us to stay quiet and listen hard.  Santa was on his way.

And then we would hear it, faint at first and then rising to a glorious crescendo.  Sleigh bells!  He was coming!  He was here!  Santa had come and right at that very moment he was leaving presents for us all just downstairs.  It must have been an eternity for us to wait until we heard the bells again this time fading into the night, signaling the end to Santa's work there.

One of the adults probably called us back downstairs at that point but the sound of our excitement and trampling feet on the stairs would drown out even the loudest shouts.  At the bottom of the stairs the door to the living room stood open waiting for us.  Inside the room was aglow with warm light and all the beauty of the holiday.  The sheer awe of it was almost indescribably.  Grandma's plain old living room had been transformed.  The tree glistened with white lights, glass icicles, glittered wooden animals and birdhouses, strings of tinsel, and little silver foil cups each with Hershey's kiss inside.  Fresh green boughs covered the mantle glittering with more lights and dotted with red poinsettias.  On the table in the corner, two green ceramic trees with multicolored lights stood guard on either side of the hand carved wooden nativity that glowed from its own light within.  Best of all were the piles of presents, freshly delivered, spread around the base of the tree, sometimes stretching all the way to the arm chair near the television.  It was a truly amazing and delightful sight to behold.  And to think, Santa had done it all in mere moments as we waited breathlessly in the room above.

Of course, the truth was that Grandma had spent the day, maybe even more, putting up the tree and decorating before starting on dinner for that night.  She would bake several dozen kinds of cookies in the days leading up to Christmas too.  She must have been a very busy lady.  And all her work was not finished when she shut the door on the decorated living room and served up a wonderful meal.  Some time along the way I learned that after we had gone upstairs after dinner Grandma would sneak through a small door from the cellar way into the living room and would plug in the lights that encircled the tree and ran across the mantle.  Then she would descend into the basement, climb outside through the Bilco doors and run around the house ringing sleigh bells.  She would then sneak back in and be quietly waiting with the other adults as we thundered down the stairs to see what Santa had brought.  I don't know how she did it some winters with the ice and snow built up on the doors but she did – every year, until somehow we had stopped believing in Santa, of course. 

Several years ago when we had gathered at Grandma's for Christmas Eve dinner again, Grandma decided to revive the old tradition.  As we sat around the table over desserts, yes plural, and coffee and tea, lingering far longer than anyone in the under-ten set could have stood, she sneaked outside and ran around the house with her bells.  She made sure to knock on the window behind my father just to make sure we knew that it was her instead of Santa.  It always was her and it's almost better that way, believing in a real person and not an elfish saint.  Yet, to this day I'm still convince that one Christmas Eve I caught a glimpse of a reindeer hoof briefly dipping below the edge of the roof.  It was magic.  

Merry Christmas!