A Christmas Miscalculation

On this night; the eve of Christmas Eve...at about this time: midnight on the newly arrived eve of Christmas...about forty or forty one years ago...my cousin and I plotted in our beds that night in snowy Erie, Pennsylvania. We had decided that we would stay up until midnight. We determined that WE would tiptoe downstairs on the stroke of midnight and catch WHOMEVER IT MAY BE who was placing our gifts under that brilliant tree. And just maybe, we would catch a peek at what it was he...or they....had brought.

We didn't really believe in Santa. Neither of us had been raised to believe in such a fallacy. But OH, it was such a nice idea. And in our childishness, we wanted to believe in him...but at some level, understood that it would be most likely our parents whom we saw doing that gift-placing.

So, tucked in our bed, we giggled and whispered our way to midnight. Excitement tingled us and we fought off yawns as the moments ticked slowwwly by. finally, it came. Midnight!! Surely, even now, someone, was putting our gifts under that tree so that, magically, it seemed, they would be there as we woke for breakfast.

We crept silently, sleuth-like, down the stairway...and peered over the banister.
The room was dark!
Not even the Christmas lights shone at this god-forsaken hour...
And not a single package did we find under that tree.

Disappointment froze us and we slunk back into our beds for a disenchanted sleep.
The next morning, we questioned our parents: Where are all the prensents? Today is Christmas, for pete's sake! Where are the goods???
And we discovered, to our great chagrin that we had made a serious error in our calculations: we thought that THAT was the night before Christmas...not merely the night before the night before.

our balloon being popped.
our plans coming to naught...
WE abandoned our quest.....

And the next morning; on Christmas eve evening, the miracle happened.

As we stumbled on Christmas morning down the steps, rubbing sleep from our eyes, that amazing display of love was piled under the tree just waiting to be torn into.

Who needs Santa??