Santa comes to our house on Christmas Eve morning. That’s correct, December 24 at the crack of dawn.
It was a tradition that started out of necessity and just continued because of the convenience. The children were told that Santa always delivered to his favorites first.
One particularly hectic Christmas, I was behind schedule. Alright, to say I was further behind schedule than usual would be a more accurate statement.
By 2:15 a.m. on December 24rd:
* I had wrapped the last present
* I took a Santa-sized bite out of a frosted cookie
* Drank an appropriate amount of Santa’s lukewarm eggnog
* Presents semi-neatly arranged under the tree (it had to look like Santa rushed and not lingered)
* Tree lights turned on
At this point, I could have crawled into bed.
At this point, I should have crawled into bed.
But I didn’t.
Instead, my sleep-deprived, inner child decided it would be fun to run through the house screaming, “He’s been here, he’s been here! Santa was here.”
In My Mind: Why should I lay down for about three hours and have a posse of kids wake me up? Wouldn’t it be fun to turn the tables and wake them up when they least expect it? Let them see what it feels like to be jolted from slumber by someone screaming about Santa?
In The Real World: I did run through the upstairs screaming, “He was here, Santa was here!” I had teens staring at my like I lost my mind. I had pre-teens squinting. I had a really confused family. Very slowly, one by one they trickled to the first floor. Very slowly they curled up under blankets on the couches. Without much enthusiasm, they opened gifts.
They remained dazed and confused until they became crabby and intolerable. They went from sleepy, heavily-lidded children to holy terrors on this Holiest of all Holy Days. What seemed like a brilliant idea, well, it wasn’t. I, too, remained dazed and confused until I became crabby and intolerable.
By noon, we were napping and the remainder of that day was a blur for me.
In theory, it should have worked. In reality, not so much. For the most part, we still have Christmas on the morning of December 24th, just at a more traditional time slot.