When I was six years old, I heard Santa Claus’ reindeer on the roof of our house.

It was Christmas Eve, of course, and I knew just what to listen for.

We’d been singing about it for the last two weeks in our first-grade music class—punctuating our squeaky voices with bells, triangles, and tambourines. I desperately wanted to play the tambourine—shake, shake, shake—or at least the jangly bells, but I was assigned the triangle. Ting, ting, ting.

I made do.

“Up on the roof top reindeer pause”

[Of course, I always assumed it was paws. I didn’t know reindeer feet were called hooves. I just assumed it was their little paws up there making the racket.]

When we got to the chorus, things got raucous.

Ho, ho, ho!

Who wouldn’t go!

Ho, ho, ho!

Who wouldn’t go!

Up on the rooftop

Click, click, click

And here’s where we all cut loose with our assigned percussion instrument. Ting, ting, ting!

Down through the chimney

with
 Good Saint Nick.

I heard the reindeer paws/hooves very clearly that Christmas Eve.

Santa had arrived.

I turned to my little brother who was asleep next to me.

That was part of our family Christmas tradition. We slept with one another. Usually, I slept with one of my older sisters. Maybe the tradition originated because Mother and Daddy wanted the older girls’ help keeping my brother and me calm.

“If you don’t go to sleep, you can’t wake up on Christmas morning!”

My parents never said anything like, “Don’t be naughty or Santa won’t come.”

They never told us there was a Santa Claus or wanted us to believe the stories about the North Pole and such. The only story we were expected to celebrate was the one in the Bible.

Away in a manger.

I always liked that Christmas carol and the line about the lowing cows. I didn’t know what lowing meant. I tried to imagine the sound. Why didn’t the cows in Bethlehem just moo?

My father even took exception to this story, though. Or at least to the lyrics:

The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes,

but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.

“Baby Jesus would have cried,” my father protested. He was a real human baby after all. He had needs and fears just like any baby. He cried.

That was one of the sermons he preached on Sundays around Christmas.

Daddy did not like the commercialization of Christmas; nor did he like the sensationalizing of the Christmas story.

Jesus had been a real boy. That was the whole point of the gift God made.

But what about those reindeer on the roof?

“Did you hear that?” I nudged my brother awake.

He squeezed an eye open and glared at me through the fog of dreams.

“No,” was all he managed to grunt before his eye snapped shut.

I strained my ears, but I didn’t hear the hooves again. Santa must have unloaded and left.

My sisters didn’t believe in Santa Claus.

Once when I asked them about it, they told me Santa was just make-believe, and only silly children believe in make-believe stories.

I was a little disappointed, but older sisters are wise.

I repeated their claim to Linda the next day. We were best friends but constantly trying to one up the other with superior knowledge. Sharing a new fact learned from my older sisters made me feel smug. Far from being impressed Linda ran home in tears. Her mother called my mother later that day and complained about how I had ruined the magic of Christmas now for her daughter.

Mother had a talk with us at the dinner table.

“Girls,” she said, addressing my older sisters mostly.

“We always told you Santa Claus was just a fun story that people like to enjoy at Christmas. We never talk about Santa because we want you to appreciate the real message of Christmas. But…other parents want their children to believe in Santa…so, let’s not go around correcting those children. It’s not our place to do so.”

It was confusing.

Santa wasn’t really real, but there we were at school singing songs about Santa on the rooftops of our houses, shimmying down our chimneys in an act that was clearly impossible, and defying the laws of time and gravity circling the globe in a single day.

I wanted to believe in this magic. I wanted it to be true.

I willed myself to hear those hooves!

Ting, ting, ting.

By the time I had woken up the next morning, I had forgotten all about my existential dilemma. Luke and I jumped out of bed and roused our sisters.

That was the rule.

We couldn’t go downstairs until Mother and Daddy were awake. One of us had to go down and knock on the door to their bedroom.

It was always ungodly early.

“Just a minute,” Mother would call out, her voice hoarse with sleep. “Daddy needs to start the fire.”

Daddy put on his slippers and flannel bathrobe and worked on the fire while Mother dressed and started a pot of coffee. Meanwhile, the five of us clustered around the banister upstairs listening. When they had nearly readied the room, we would line up in order of age, Luke first as the youngest, and Judy last. We’d sit on the stairway in order, waiting, waiting, waiting for the call.

“Come on in!”

Finally! We bounded down the stairs into the den.

The lights on the tree were lit. The tinsel sparkled and the fire crackled. Mother gave Daddy a mug of coffee while we surveyed the room.

Of course, our stockings were hung by the fireplace with care!

And in the middle of the room there were five chairs, one for each of us, and on each chair there were unwrapped presents. These were the big gifts—the ones Mother and Daddy had saved all year to buy us—the ones we had selected from the Sears catalog. That year, I found Chatty Baby on the chair that was designated for me.

I pulled the ring behind her neck.

“I love you.” A raspy voice whirred from deep inside her chest.

“I love you, too, Chatty Baby.”

I was ecstatic.

Luke got a set of cap guns.

“Pow, pow, pow.”

A whiff of gunpowder mingled with the scent of coffee and pine.

“Okay, kids! Who wants to open the presents under the tree?”

After we’d oohed and ahhed over the gifts set out on our chairs, we turned our attention to the mound of presents under the tree, wrapped in pretty green and red paper and festooned with ribbons and bows.

Daddy pulled a gift out, read the name on the card, and handed it to the recipient.

“To Beth from Joy.”

We all watched as Beth opened her gift.

And then Daddy pulled out another present and then another. Until all the gifts were gone and the base of the tree looked suddenly forlorn.

Eventually, Daddy brought the stockings down from the fireplace and handed them to us.

Later, when I saw the stockings that other children got on Christmas, I realized that ours were tiny. At the time, I had no idea. They were just cute red stockings neatly embroidered with our names. Our mother made them for us. Or maybe it was the handiwork of Grandma Copeland.

Mother always filled the toe with a “mikan” (Japanese for tangerine). That took up a lot of room in the stocking, so there really wasn’t much space for other treats. We got pecans, too, and in the space left, a few Hershey’s kisses and some hard candy.
It didn’t matter, though, if our stockings weren’t overly stuffed. There was plenty of candy and cookies and other sweets in bowls here and there around the house.

Grandma Copeland always sent us a box of her homemade fudge.

We were not hurting for sweets.

Nor did we hurt for Christmas magic. We made our own.

Even without Santa Claus, or especially without Santa Claus, we enjoyed the thrill of giving gifts. It was great fun watching others open theirs.  We waited to see if the gifts we had bought—small as they might have been—were happily received.  They always were.

Christmas never disappointed.

Ting, ting, ting.