Twas the Night Before

Christmas Eve has always been the most delightful part of Christmas for me. When I was a child, Christmas Eve was the apex of anticipation. It represented a kind of peace on earth for me because everything seemed warm and secure; all was right with the world that night. It was an evening when family reigned and nothing intruded. There were presents aplenty under the tree each year, producing a sense of bounty and blessedness. Yet, we knew that Jolly Old Saint Nicholas would top it off, like a cherry on a sundae, with something exceptional during the middle of the night. We felt special in our home on Christmas Eve.

When I was the parent of small children, Christmas Eve was a time of excited preparation. Their mom and I loved creating a magical scene for the kids to see the next morning. She would wrap and wrap and wrap, and I would put everything in its place around the tree and the family room. Everything was located in a way that would produce the maximum “Wow!” factor when the children entered the family room the next morning. With five children, there were enough presents each year to fill a gift arc that spanned the room. The gifts were not only around the tree, but also in front of and on the fireplace hearth, the couch and every chair and table in the room.

As the years progressed a wonderful array of Christmas Eve traditions arose and took root in our family – new pajamas for everyone; hot chocolate afloat with marshmallows; singing carols with abandon and utter disregard for the dearth of musical talent in our genes; reading a special Christmas book about Santa and his elves and his cat named, Whiskers, with our “unique” additions to the tale being told; reading "The Night Before Christmas"; setting out milk and chocolate chip cookies for Santa, whose appreciation of them never waned; and then, to close the evening, reading the Christmas story from the second chapter of the Book of Luke and kneeling together for a prayer of gratitude for all we had. These things worked their magic year after year.

I went to bed after each Christmas Eve with a peaceful heart and a sense of fulfillment. Just before doing so, however, I would “set the trap” in the hallway between the bedrooms and the family room. The “trap” consisted of strategically placed chairs and a blanket that was laid carefully and perfectly smooth between the chairs. Our kids were assured that any treading past the chairs and onto that blanket could and would be easily detected because the blanket was set in a secret way that no one other than dad could reproduce. They knew that some dire consequence awaited any trespasser. Never a footprint wrinkle was seen on that perfectly smooth blanket. Of course, it can be told now that never a parent looked at the “trap” after it was set.

After only a couple of hours of sleep, we would awaken to our five-member choir singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” outside our bedroom door sometime between 5 and 6AM. With that, we went down the hall, past the now dismantled and thoroughly trampled “trap” to watch our children express that wonder-filled glee that can only be heard early on Christmas morning.