Little Things Helped to Keep the Magic Alive

For those of you who celebrate Christmas and have young children who believe in Santa Claus I am sharing with you a couple of ideas I put into play during the holidays to keep the magic alive when my children were small people.

* One year I borrowed a pipe from a friend who was a pipe smoker and I left the pipe on the table next to the plate of cookies and glass of milk that the children had prepared for Santa's snack.
* Another year I borrowed 1 black rubber boot, sprinkled black coal dust just outside the mouth of the fireplace, made a footprint with the boot, and laid the boot on the floor near the base of the fireplace.
* On yet another Christmas Eve having been privy to (my children did not know I knew) a not so nice thing they had done (nothing major but worth speaking to them about) and which I had not decided on how yet to handle, I partially ate the cookies, drank a bit of the milk, and wrote a thank you note (for the snack) to each of the children with my left hand and signed it "Love Santa".  In the note I mentioned that they needed to come clean about their naughtiness.

As you can imagine, on Christmas morning after discovering the signs that Santa had indeed been to our home, my children were full of extra joy and amazement.  Their attention was focused on returning Santa's pipe and boot so before they engaged in the mission of opening their gifts, they spent the first part of Christmas morning packing the items and readying them for shipping to the North Pole. As for the note, ah well yes, they did in fact come clean, apologized and wrote Santa a note telling him they were sorry and would try to do better. 

As wonderful and fun as it was, I add this; Trying to convince my daughter that Santa was not stuck in the chimmny the year that I left the boot out was a major undertaking.  She wanted us to call the fire department and have them check.  It took some deceptive manuvers to make it appear as though we had really mailed the pipe and the boot back to the North Pole on Christmas Day.

Yeah I know, Little Things I say, well for me they were little things to do and I still have the memories to retell.  So do my children.