Christmas is truly my favorite holiday of all. People seem to be a little friendlier, smiling more and more benevolent in their giving.
There is just excitement in the air. This year, however, it is somewhat melancholy. My grandsons are growing up in stature and reasoning. They ask lots of questions. We do not sit and wait to hear Santa’s reindeer hoofs land on the roof top or hear the bells ringing as he makes his landing. There are skeptics in our house.
There was a letter answered to a little girl named Virginia in September of 1897 when she wrote to the New York Sun and asked if there was truly a Santa Claus. This is part of the answer. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give your life its highest beauty and joy. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten thousand years from now he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
Have you ever seen how, early on Christmas morning, the little ones in the family hurry to get to the tree to see what Santa left? Have you seen them smell the apples, oranges and all the other fruit he has left under the tree. Have you ever seen a little boy get his first bike? A little girl get her first baby doll? Have you seen the sparkle in their eyes as they know for certain that this gift was brought by Santa? We all need that childlike faith to sear through our spirits so that our hearts do not become commonplace. We need to expect the magic of the Christmas spirit to continue to fill our beings and we will experience that wonderful sense of enchantment and magic.
As for my house, we will be waiting up late on Christmas Eve to hear the hoofs hit our tin roof and hear the bells jingle as the reindeer settle down. There will be milk and sugar cookies left by the tree. There will be no fire in our fireplace that night because Santa Claus will need to get down our chimney. We will rise early on Christmas morning to see what he has brought to us and our children and grandsons. Yes, There is a Santa Claus!
Weekly Recipe
This is my sugar cookie recipe. I don’t roll and cut them out as they seem not to be as scrunchy. ¾ cup butter, 4 oz. cream cheese, 1 ¼ cups of sugar, 3 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon vanilla, (I sometimes use rum flavoring.) 2 ½ cups flour. Cream butter and cream cheese and sugar, and add in egg yolks. Drop by teaspoonsful onto baking sheet. Sprinkle with sugar. Do not flatten. Bake 12-14 minutes at 350
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Peggy Sims is a columnist and Kosciusko resident.
