The scariest night of the year is almost here. Yep, Christmas Eve, the night of the stocking filling.
As a child, there was something so magical about waking up obscenely early on Christmas Day (naturally) and feeling the weight of my stocking on my feet on the end of my bed. I would never rush to open the parcels, I just loved knowing Father Christmas had been and enjoying the excitement and anticipation. Every now and then I'd wonder how he managed to get in as we didn't have a chimney and my mother took a Fort Knox approach to security, eventually after working through all the possibilities, I decided it had to be through the cat flap....
I wanted to recreate that magic for my sons so they've always hung their Christmas sacks on their beds for Santa to fill. Now that was all well and good when they were tiny and out like a light at 7pm. I could breeze in at 10pm and quietly fill their stockings. Piece of cake.
In recent years though, it's been another matter. The days of them being asleep at a decent hour so I can sneak in and do my Ms Christmas bit are long gone. Stocking time has got later and later and become scarier. More than once I've frozen in mid stocking fill when one has turned over in his sleep or a floorboard has creaked as I've crept in. I got fed up with having to sit up into the early hours to be sure they were asleep so now I go to bed and set the alarm for 3am. How mad is that?
Those are the moments when I find myself muttering 'why the hell didn't you go for hanging the stockings on the fireplace downstairs, it would have been so much easier and you could be tucked up in bed asleep right now?'
It's daft because I know they know it's me (the older one has known for years and the little one more recently) but the traditions are maintained - the letter up the chimney, the carrot for Rudolph and mince pie and tipple for Father Christmas on the hearth....
I found out there was no Father Christmas the year my childhood friend and I decided to try to stay awake to see Santa. We managed the staying awake bit but rather than a jovial chubby man in a red suit with a big bushy white beard we got our dads, completely sozzled and giggling.....I can still remember lying stock still while they noisily and wobbily filled the stockings, then us turning to each other ashen faced when they'd gone and mouthing 'Father Christmas is our dads?!'
A friend said she discovered there was no Santa the year her dad crept into her room while she was fast asleep. Unfortunately, for both of them, he tripped on the pillowcase he was supposed to be filling with presents and fell onto her bed, landing heavily on her leg. So not only did she find out there was no Father Christmas, she ended up with a crushed leg too.
Merry Christmas!
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