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When
Children Were Children
Santa’s
letter written backwards
By Sharon Hopper
Well
by golly we are still looking at the coming Holiday Season. Pretty
soon school will be out and the children will be hunting for something
to do. Now
this is the time that my mom would give us our Christmas shopping money
and she
would take us to town. Naturally it was the dime store. Woolworth or
Ben
Franklin.
I
had a smaller brother and I would take his hand and we would shop
for all the people we had to shop for. That was mom, dad, sister,
brother, 2 grandmother’s,
2 grandfather’s, and maybe a favorite person if the money allowed.
Approximately,
we had about 10.00 apiece to spend. And we had to purchase our own
wrapping
paper. It would probably take a couple hours of an afternoon for us to
get all
of our gifts. Then we would go home to wrap and label our packages.
Then we
would place them under the tree. Finally the tree did not look so
lonesome. Mom
never put the presents under the tree. That was Santa’s job. I actually
believed in Santa till I was about 10. Slow wasn’t I? My mother
actually left
me a letter that she wrote backwards. It was supposed to be from Santa
and I
had to put it in front of a mirror to read it. In short it said that
because I no
longer believed in Santa I would not be receiving that special gift. I
actually
wrote to Santa begging him to know that I still believed in the great
Santa. Of
course my mother did that to protect my little brother from my
misgivings.
And
there were still all those cookies to decorate. So mom would
make a big bowel of icing and turn us loose with our imagination. That
would
take another day. Then there was the usual trip to town with mom to
purchase
the big dinner fixins. Even if we went somewhere else for the Christmas
meal my
mom would take a large part of the meal. Finally the big day was about
to
arrive and we had to clean the house till it shined. After all Santa
needed a
clean house and lots of cookies and milk. We always went to church for
midnight
services on Christmas Eve. And my dad always read the Christmas story
before
supper on Christmas Eve. Christmas was important when I was a child,
but so
much simpler.
It
was really a big birthday party.
By
Sharon Hopper
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