I snuck down the steps, heavy-footed and confident, anxious to see what was waiting for us in the living room. There, in the middle of the floor was a new drafting desk - exactly what I had asked for. From the shadows of my stairway, I could see a handwritten note waiting for me and so with a slightly-held breathe, I finished down the steps to read what Santa Claus had written to me.
I was fourteen.
I was fourteen and there was a still a part of me that had held on to Santa - the reality of Santa - reindeers and all. While I had long ago learned that Santa was fictional, there was a big part of me that simply couldn't accept his non-existance.
See, when George and I were small, mom and dad would go to great lengths to bring the magic of Santa and Christmas to the Gumpert household. One year, they pulled out all the stops: Pain-stakingly tearing buddles of cotton balls into small shreds and lining the interior of our chimney was among the details that year. George was too small to really process it, but for me it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Looking back, I couldn't tell you if this activity yielded a chimney FULL of cotton or a small little wick of cotton, but I guess that's even more the point.
That same year, I woke up in the middle of the night to loud banging and scraping on the roof above my room. My heart raced and thumped loudly in my 5-year-old chest with excitement and anxiety as I tried to convince myself to fall back asleep so that I wouldn't ruin Santa's visit.
From that point on, I woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve pretty regularly. I would sneek quietly into the living room and strain to see the tree in the dark. Inevitably, my eyes would play tricks on me and I would SEE Santa Claus hunched over the packages, pulling more out from his satchel.
When I was 8, the girl next door got mad at me for something and, to punish me, she yelled loudly "YEA!? Well Santa Claus AND the Easter Bunny aren't real!!".
With tears streaming down my face, I fled up the stairs to our second floor apartment and ask mom and dad if it was true. The paused before telling me that the Easter Bunny was not real, but Santa was. I guess they couldn't bear the idea of me losing both childhood dreams in the same day. Like a child, I believed them, of course, and continued perpetuating the myth of the Easter Bunny for my brother's sake.
A few years later, mom and dad finally came clean about jolly old St. Nick but for some reason, as I got closer to mid-teenager-dom, I just couldn't accept it. I had heard those reindeer and I saw all that cotton and my brain just couldn't let it go.
So on Christmas Eve of my 14th year, I wrote a letter to Santa and left it for him. We had long ago stopped leaving cookies, so I found an obvious spot for the letter and told dad what I was doing and why.
"I just have to know, one way or the other, for sure." And off I went to bed.
My parents wrote a beautiful letter (I still have no idea which parent wrote it) and left it for me on my new drafting table. It talked about how Santa lives in the hearts of all of us, but especially the young and told me not to give up on whimsy and magic no matter how silly it may seem.
Of course my parents never used the word "whimsy" but you get the point!
So, in my house, Christmas always held this incredible, beautiful warmth to it.
After George and I moved out, we stopped going into Brooklyn for Christmas (Grandma had passed away and the house had been sold), dad's job became less stable, and mom and dad became less happy in their marriage, the four of us tried so hard to keep that same warmth in Christmas. But, despite our best efforts, it waned.
I started putting my heart and soul into Christmas' with Josh - his Christmas history was never so lavish as mine and so watching him open gifts (all be it weeks before Christmas cause we could never seem to wait till Christmas morning) often compensated for I was losing in Christmas with my family. We still loved spending the time with one another, but the act of Christmas itself had become a bit of a chore for us all and we were "forcing it".
This year, by far, will be the hardest Christmas of my life. Olivia is too young to "get" the magic of Christmas and so the oweness is on Josh and I to make our own Christmas great.
And yet, I still find myself trying to "hurry" up to the 26th.
I know,full well, it will not be this way next year. I know that we will establish our own traditions and pass the magic of Christmas and Santa on to my daughter in the coming years and now is when things will really start to be fun.
But, for this year, there is a lot of sorrow surrounding the holidays for a multitude of reasons and I am trying to "get through" the once-magical holidays.
Santa will return to my Christmas spirit - in full force. We all need Santa in our lives for a myriad of different reasons. So tell the mean girl next door to "go screw", Santa Claus is coming to town - he's just navigating a detour.
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