As a child I always had magical thoughts of Santa up until one Christmas Eve when I was 5 years old. That year I was in kindergarten and was exposed to all kinds of germs, so I ended up having chicken pox over Christmas.
My parents and sister all went to midnight mass with our other family members - leaving me at home in bed with my Grandma to care for me. I asked my older sister how the heck Santa would be able to leave us toys if we lived in a Chicago bunglalow and did not have a chimney? Who was going to open up the gate for Santa and let him in the house? Did Grandma know that she needed to do that? I couldn't sleep because I was so concerned.
Since we did not have a chimney at that house, we put our stockings around our bedroom door knobs. So my stocking was hung at my door knob. I saw my Grandma coming up to my door and I pretended to be sleeping and I saw her load up my stocking while she was standing there looking at me the entire time. My adrenaline was pumping - where was Santa? I didn't hear the doorbell ring!!
The following morning, when my sister and I were looking at what was in our stockings, I confided to my sister what I had seen. In a feat so impressive for a then fourth grader, she explained to me that Santa was so fat that he got stuck at the gate - so he had to give Grandma all our presents for our stockings. Looking back now, she was pretty smart - and did not require any prompting for lying from our parents. She came up with all that on her own on her feet. Not bad!
But I knew she was full of crap. I continued to pretend to believe in the big S man to keep getting my stockings filled every year til my parents figured out that I knew better.
She is also the one who told me about the Stork and made up my fake adoption papers in later years. But those topics are for later.
Anyway, now that Ricky is 2 and a half years old, we always warn him to be good because Santa is watching, etc. Our house is your typical Chicago-style raised ranch house with no chimney - so we keep our stockings on our door knobs. There is no other place for them. Ricky is pretty smart and I am afraid he might catch us filling his stocking. He's so little that we would like to keep the Santa thing going as long as we can.
I can't wait til we move next year - to a house that has a chimney. Then Santa will have no problems.
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