A Visit from St. Nick
When I was a child, Santa Claus always came to visit our home on Christmas Eve. We would gather around the tree in the evening waiting for him. For some reason, my father was always called out to work; his office was nearby. Santa would come and give us our presents and then when my father returned, we’d tell him all about Santa’s visit. It became our tradition to open our gifts on Christmas Eve after Santa left. Not until I was about 10, did I realize that Santa was really my father. He has continued the tradition of dressing as Santa and giving presents to his many grandchildren when they visit for Christmas.
—Eileen Maher Kronauer, Eileen’s Country Kitchen
Waiting for Santa
I grew up in Boston. My house was on a hill and overlooked the Arnold Arboretum. Even though we were in the city and could bounce a ball from our living room to that of our adjacent neighbors, the front yard was a vast expanse of open land, dogwood trees, forsythia, and the arboretum ponds. I would patiently sit on my warm radiator at my living room window and look out into the blackness of the Christmas Eve sky over the arboretum. My little brother would join me. We would wait and watch, looking for Santa and his sleigh in the sky. It may have taken an hour or so, but sometime between 8 and 9 p.m. I would hear the bells and catch a glimpse of Santa and his reindeer off in the distance.
My children are intrigued by my memories. Even though we now live in a neighborhood in the country where our sky is very dark and without city lights, we don’t have that great vast expanse of open land like I did in Jamaica Plain. My children have never quite been able to see Santa soaring through the sky. This year we are going to try a different approach. We are going to park on Prospect Hill and wait until he appears.
——Anne Hentz, Decorating Diva
Santa—Wondering no more!
One Christmas-time advantage that I had growing up in a Victorian-era house was the primitive heating system. Hot air blasted through one main grate in the vestibule and rose through little registers cut into the floor of each upstairs bedroom. This arrangement was useful to a 5-year-old in many ways, but was never handier than on Christmas Eve. Santa had to pass beneath my room to reach the tree, so camping out above the register in my room was a yuletide imperative, a ritual performed in what I believed to be deep secrecy.
One year I hit pay dirt, lifting my lids just in time to see a blur of red and white pass under the grate. The requisite sounds floated upstairs: crinkling paper, a muted jingling of bells, retreating footsteps heading for the kitchen. I remember shutting my eyes tightly so as not to jinx my dream-come-true. I waited an eternity before heading downstairs to the kitchen, looking for proof. The empty cookie plate and milk glass were the answer to my Christmas prayers. Santa had silently landed his sleigh, entered the house under our dog’s nose, left packages, eaten a snack, and moved on. Now I could sleep. Suddenly, though, I heard a scrabbling in the kitchen’s upper chimney, where a metal plate blocked an old warming oven. I sprinted upstairs. Santa or one of his helpers had obviously not used the front door, as my parents had said they would.
The memory surfaced years later when my parents began reminiscing about the squirrel family who had once found winter refuge in the wide old chimney that led to the warming oven. Now I wonder whether Santa met the little creatures on his way up and out of the chimney.
—Valerie Hurley, reporter
A magical time
When I was in elementary school all I ever wanted for Christmas was a doll, and I had quite a collection. My parents used to tell me and my brother that magic would happen on Christmas Eve—the toys would come to life. I’d go to bed that night, almost too filled with anticipation and excitement to sleep. And before I dozed off, I’d check the shelf in my room to make sure all the dolls were present and accounted for. When dawn broke on Christmas Day, my brother and I were out of bed like a shot, ready to race downstairs to see what Santa had brought. And when I looked downstairs—lo and behold! There were my dolls—sitting on the stairs and all around the Christmas tree, surely to greet the inevitable addition to my doll family.
—Lynda King, editor
A Christmas mystery
Years ago, when my husband and I were first married, my husband went back to school for a graduate degree. Trying to make ends meet on one salary and with a new mortgage, we had very modest Christmas plans. Those plans did not include a Christmas tree.
Imagine our surprise when we got up on Christmas Eve morning to find on our doorstep a beautiful, fresh-cut Christmas tree. We were dumbfounded. Who knew us well enough to know we didn’t have a tree yet, and why was there no note?
We took the tree in and decorated it promptly, wondering all the while where it had come from.
Our mystery was not solved until Christmas break ended in January, when a friend returned home after visiting family in Seattle. Our friend, an out-of-state lawyer who had not yet taken the Massachusetts bar exam, was working as a private detective. One of her most recent assignments had been investigating potential insurance claim fraud. She was assigned to visit a Christmas tree farm, track down a man claiming that he was too disabled to do his physically demanding job, and make sure everything was up to snuff.
When she arrived, she found the man in question and asked him to cut down a Christmas tree. He cut down the tree and dragged it back to her car, negating his claim (which our private-eye friend caught on video), and unwittingly giving us an unexpected, yet very appreciated, Christmas gift.
—Lisa Aciukewicz, photo and design editor
Themes of Christmas
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| This year’s theme at 7 Oak Hill Road. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
Twenty-five years ago my husband decorated the end of our barn facing up Oak Hill Road. He nailed together pieces of wood to make a rough circle, at least 25 feet in diameter, and covered it with evergreen boughs and red bows. This wreath became that year’s theme, and every Christmas after that we’ve had a different theme—announced on the barn shortly after Thanksgiving.
Over the years there has been a bell, an angel, snowmen, gingerbread people, packages, ornaments, sugarplums, and more. (Decorations in the house follow the theme—you don’t want to see our attic!) Some renditions have been easier than others. My son Don, who took over from his dad, says that the snowflake, reindeer, and jingle bell have been among the most challenging. Proof of this lies in the comment someone made about last year’s 3-D jingle bell:
“It looks like a space ship landed on the side of your barn!”
The reindeer came out looking more like a dog; the snowflake, however, was breathtaking.
While Don does the lion’s share of the work, the rest of the family pitches in, holding the ladder, stapling lights, bringing coffee, and lending a critical eye. My role has always been to stay inside to fret and pace nervously until everyone’s off the ladder.
Each year when the decoration is finally up, we like to play a little game. We pile into a car and drive to the top of Oak Hill, turn around and head down, pretending we are innocent of what lies at the bottom. We begin to glimpse lights through the trees and ask, amid giggles, “See the lights! What is it? What will it be this year?”
Then we “ooh” and “aah” as the image comes more and more into full view. Finally we can see the whole decoration.
“Wow! Fabulous! They’ve done it again!”
—Carlene Phillips, columnist and copy editor