Real Modern Dads

I can't wait story #4... Christmas Eve!

I think it would be easy to write about Christmas morning and how a child's eyes light up as they awake to a beautiful Christmas tree with tons of presents underneath, and I will write about that one week.  However, I cannot wait until the day before Christmas, Christmas Eve.

In my family, we had a tradition of going to my dad's parent's house for Christmas Eve.  We would go to Mass at 4:00, sit there for 2 hours until mass started at 6:00.  As a kid I remembered, being anxious/tortured because I knew while we were at mass the one and only Santa Clause would be visiting my grandparent's house.  All I wanted was to catch a glimpse of Santa and his reindeer.

During mass, we would listen to the sermon, sing songs like Holy Night, then finally drive back to my grandparent's house listening to Christmas Carols.  We would sing the entire way home in anticipation of the hope to see Santa and his reindeer.  The cousins and I would run into the house, and see that Santa had visited us by evidence of presents under the tree and a half eaten plate of cookies and milk.  However, instead of running to the presents, my grandfather would call us outside because he could see Rudolph's red nose in the distance.  Next thing you knew, that red light would start moving faster and faster and then it was gone into the night.  For many years, this was the norm of our Christmas Eve.  We would always "just miss" Santa and his reindeer but the glimpse kept us believing.  Come to find out, my grandfather had the next door neighbor run down the fence line with a red light so we believed it was Santa.

Though my grandfather is no longer with us, I want to keep that memory alive.  Doug and I will figure out how to keep that tradition going.  The innocents of a young child believing in Santa is beautiful.  It wasn't the gifts that we cared about (okay, we cared about the gifts too), but it was about the belief that Santa actually existed and we saw his sleigh take off.  That is a memory that I will always have with me and I hope to pass those types of memories along.