Christmas Morning Then and Now

It’s a quiet Christmas morning sitting by the fire with my wife. The children aren’t awake yet. They are all grown up now but I’m glad they are home with us today. My fondest memory of Christmas morning is from their pre-teenage years. We had a rule that none of the kids could go downstairs to see what Santa brought until every one of the six of them were awake.

Inevitably, one of them would sleep late. So my oldest son, who was then about 8, would be the first to crawl into bed with us to wait. As he lay between my wife and me, his heart was pounding with excitement. Each beat almost shook the bed. One by one the others appeared until our bed was filled with a quivering mass of high anticipation.

Finally the last one arose, and they all raced down the stairs. In those days, I videotaped the fun of Christmas. At some point amid the mountains of strewn wrapping paper and boxes, one of them would always look up and say, “This is the best Christmas ever.”

I’m thankful that they are all happy adults. In a different way it’s still “the best Christmas ever.”