My favourite Christmas

Back in October I saw a Tweet by G! Magazine that they were looking for people to submit their favourite Christmas story for the November/December issue. I knew right away that I would make a submission and exactly the story that I would tell. It reads as follows:

Anyone who knows me at all will tell you that I am a huge fan of Christmas. The jingling of little bells always brings a smile to my face. I go caroling door to door. I’ve been known to watch an entire movie just because there is a Christmas tree in it…incredible but true. Telling you about my favourite Christmas is really a story within a story. Let’s begin.

Back around 1996 I was teaching music at John J Sark School on Lennox Island. It was December and I had in front of me a class of Grades 4, 5, and 6 students. It was the time of year when singing Christmas songs and getting ready for the concert was customary. I shook the jingle bells from the set of rhythm instruments and immediately got everyone’s attention and then kept it as I quickly told them the story of my very best Christmas as a child.

“Growing up I lived with my family in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When I was a little girl, oh I’d say about eight or nine, we traveled to my grandmother’s house for the holidays. We had never gone away for Christmas before or after that one time. Grammy lived on Cape Sable Island. It took all day to get there since my mom didn’t let my dad drive faster than 30 mph. I don’t remember anything really about our stay with grammy but I’ll never forget what happened when we returned to Halifax. After a long journey back home I walked in the front door of our little house to discover a real, full-sized, fully-decorated, lit tree with gift wrapped presents piled underneath it. That tree was NOT there when we left days earlier. We did NOT have any other relatives in the city.”

I looked at all my wide-eyed listeners and said, “Now who do you suppose did all that?” After a very brief silence I heard one small voice say, “See, I told ya!”  Two brothers were staring at one another. The younger had just nudged the older one as if to say I had eliminated any doubts about the existence of good old Saint Nick.

To this day I still get goose bumps when I talk about it.  A few years back I mentioned that special Christmas to my dad and voiced my amazement about the whole thing. He asked if I knew how it happened, if I wanted him to explain. I told him not to say another word. A true believer knows EXACTLY how it happened. Jingle bells, jingle bells…!

You can also read this on page 12 of the November/December issue of G! Magazine as well as many interesting and enjoyable articles.