...

'TWAS THE NIGHT before Christmas!!
And all through the house...it was reasonably clean and cheerful and filled with expectation!

There is Christmas music filling the air, and due to the fact that it is dark and raining outside, the lights on the tree and the candles fill their role superbly. Hmm, I believe you could say...yes, it's true...I'm basking! I'm here with actual time on my hands in the middle of the afternoon just verging on Christmas eve! That means you get to hear about a Christmas tradition that I experienced when I was a child.

Christmas eve was nearly as exciting as Christmas Day itself. Anticipation was always running high as darkness set in. After our supper of oyster stew, my family would go to the Christmas eve service at church, where one memorable year I walked down the aisle of the darkened sanctuary with the other third-grade girls, each carrying a lighted candle, as the congregation sang "Brightest and Best of the sons of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid..."

Coming home again, the Christmas records were hastily stacked on the player, a fire was built, and popcorn and tangerines were carried into the living room and eaten around the fireplace. Each child was allowed to open one present on Christmas eve, and even though we knew it would be something to wear--new pajamas, a robe or slippers--it was a wrapped gift to open!

Off to bed, then, we would go, our socks hung on the mantle where the four little N-O-E-L Christmas angels kept their watch for Santa.

Of course we knew that Santa was just a made-up character. We knew that it was Mama who filled those stockings late at night. And it was also Mama who crept quietly into our bedrooms when we were all asleep and slipped a new book under the pillow of each of her sleeping children. We had a mother who loved books, and she began this tradition as a ploy to delay the mad dash for the Christmas tree and the presents on Christmas morning.


In bed on Christmas eve, I would try my best to stay awake and catch her in the act...but before I knew it, I was waking up to a dark and quiet house. And oh, it was Christmas morning! With that realization, a little shiver of anticipation ran through me and still lying quietly, I would slip my hand under my pillow. Yes, there was the book! I was not one to quickly throw off the pillow and discover what literary treasure was mine this Christmas. No, it was too deliciously enchanting to run my hand over the book and feel its texture and volume; to finger the pages, and perhaps the lettering; to imagine what kind of story it would contain. After a while, I'd slide the book from its spot and hold it up to my nose, breathing in the scent of newly printed pages. Finally, I would steal a peek in the faint morning light.

Ultimately, of course, I'd hear the call of those still-wrapped and waiting presents under the tree; I would put the book aside, Mama's tactic failing to forestall the "Can't we get up now and open the presents?" for long. But the promise of pleasurable reading to be had when the further thrills of Christmas morning waned was a special gift, the memory of which I cherish to this day.

Can you hear me exclaim, as I shout with all my might...
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!