It happened one Christmas

I've posted this story on Stir Pot, it really happened this way!

It happened one Christmas; 

I must have been nine years old that is 1969!

 We used to get snow around here not heavy but still enough to close school. This year we got around 8 inches it fell the night of Christmas Eve! My father worked that day and would not get in until late. We held a tradition where we opened one gift the night before, the 5 of us sorted out the gifts I had a wrapped box to open, ah drat’s it’s underwear, (Lol) just my luck, but high hopes for the bicycle I’d been wanting!
All of us were excited that night, almost too much to sleep, we had been kept inside by the snowstorm, and were all suffering from Cabin Fever, the kind you can only have when you are young. However, we forced ourselves to sleep with the dreams of all our Christmas wishes coming true!

This particular Christmas I was the first one up, ran to the tree to see what Santa had left for me. I had been kind of thinking that Santa was in reality my parents by this age! Never the less, I was off to see if my best Christmas gift was under the tree! Low and behold, to my great disappointment nothing like that was there….

There was my sister’s dollhouse, my other sister’s spring-loaded horse, my brother’s model train set. My heart sank, I thought well maybe it is outside and Santa had left it out front! Quickly I dressed warmly for a exit out the front door. Then out the door I went, the front, porch covered with snow and ice. I almost fell holding on to the screen door handle, I saw two sets of Boot tracks, one leading to the front door one leading away. My older brother and I were excellent trackers; I had been hunting with him as long as I can remember. I could track a rabbit in dense woods by the time I was 9 years old.

I followed the tracks, in the snow, into the front yard, where they came to an apparent end; there were two long, flat tracks leading half way across the lawn where they ended. In between the two flat tracks were two sets of deer tracks leading to just beyond the flat tracks! This was odd to me, I thought of many ways to do this in the snow but none of them worked, could this be real evidence, how on earth could this be? Had Santa really landed in my front yard, did I have the proof that he was real? I went to get my brother to explain it, he was at a loss as well!

Afterwards, returning inside, with my disappointment for no bicycle, and was going to get warm and I went in to the house without looking up, to the kitchen for some cocoa, heavy in my heart.  Wondering, I missed my chance because I doubted in the real Santa Clause. As I turned towards the living room something shinny was there under the tree! Wow, there was my bicycle, the miracle of my ninth Christmas still comes to my mind every year now.

I often wondered how my Dad and Mom pulled this off. How could they put the sleigh tracks and deer tracks in the snow without leaving one additional footprint, in the pristine snow? They never talked about it or how my bike was suddenly there, after it was not when I woke up!

Could it be that because I had doubted that there was a Santa, that he wanted me to see, there was? I will never know!