The Year My Dad Saved Christmas

It really 'twas night before Christmas, and the children actually were nestled all snug in their beds--well, all except for one. That would be me, the oldest of the bunch, and the lightest sleeper. Really, though, it's a wonder anyone could sleep with all the racket that was emanating from our kitchen that night. There was banging and yelling and words that were not part of any Christmas story I'd ever heard.

Once we'd said our good nights, had our drinks of water and marched up the stairs to the beat of Dad chanting, "To potty, to drink, to bed," we were not expected expected not to show our little faces again until daylight. Christmas Eve was no exception, although we were allowed a little leeway on what constituted "daylight" on Christmas morning.

But who could sleep with all those wonder-filled images spinning around in her head? Santa would soon be landing his reindeer-driven sleigh on the roof and, using his magical Santa powers, would slide down our chimney and pop into our living room, landing right in front of the tree--which this year had been lovingly spray-painted white by my mom. There, he would breathe life into all those sugarplum visions, gobble a few bites of cookie and take off again, performing the same miracle in every single house in the world!

I knew it was against the rules to spy, and that if I got caught doing so, that would be the end of Christmas as we knew it. But no one had said anything about staying awake to hear the magic. Except I was pretty sure that what I was hearing that Christmas Eve so long ago had nothing to do with magic. It sounded like someone--my dad--was in a lot of trouble, and needed my help. Or, at the very least, he needed me to poke my head in and see what was going on.

I tiptoed down the stairs and across the dining room without being seen by my mom, who must have been in their bedroom wrapping gifts or something. (If it had been me, there would have been wine, but that was not Mom's style.) I stood in the doorway for a moment, too stunned to even gasp at what to my wondering eyes did appear. There must have been some horrible accident involving a small house, some strollers and a large wooden box with a giraffe on it. My dad was stripped to his tee-shirt in the dead of winter in our drafty old farmhouse, holding a hammer over his head. To say he was startled by my "Hey, Dad, what's going on?" would be a dramatic understatement of the obvious.

Knowing now what I didn't know then, I can see what a vision of grace under pressure my dad was that night. I'm sure he wanted to direct some of those colorful words flying around the kitchen at me, telling me to get my butt straight back into bed. But he quickly assessed the situation, and directed them at Santa instead. The story went that the man in red had dropped in a little earlier, before he and Mom had had time to don their cap and kerchief respectively, and told Dad he was a little pinched for time, so would my dad please be a champ and put together some of the stuff for us kids himself. Dad was upset, to say the least, but I was not to worry. Everything would be fine in the morning. Then he put his arm around my shoulder and escorted me back to my bed, where I may or may not have actually slept.

I have never been able to forget the year my dad helped Santa and saved a little girl's magical visions of Christmas all in one night, without changing a single thing about the person he was--my hero.