Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A Christmas tale

Naughty List or Nice List ?

Remember the Christmas magic of things like- sitting around the table together making popcorn chains to decorated the Christmas tree; The look on a child’s face when you plug in the Christmas lights; Catching Mum’s head turned long enough to snatch a chocolate from the tree. Those are the Christmas gifts that can’t be bought in shops and they are the ones you remember long after the electric train is gone.

One of my goals as a kid, was to stay up late and catch Santa Claus on Christmas eve. I don’t know why kids do this, maybe we think if we catch him- we’ll get all the presents he has left in his sack. I tried for years to catch that rascal, but never could. I always fell asleep and he’d slip right past all my traps. It didn’t matter how much string I used or how many pie pans I tied them to- he’d still get though without making a noise.

My favorite food for Christmas was those butter cookies cut out like a wreath. The only time we had any of those butter cookies was at Christmas time and thats what kind Mum wanted to leave out for Santa. I told her to leave Santa those burnt up chocolate chip that she always tried to make instead. But she wanted to leave him the good stuff. No matter, I ate up all Santa’s cookies while I was staying up late trying to catch him. The best Santa ever got at our house was a few crumbs and half a glass of milk.

When you get on that naughty list, its hard to get off- just ask my granny, she’s been on it for years. She would never admit that she tried to catch Santa Claus, but I think she took a garden hose out one year and iced up the roof. Santa fell off in the yard and dropped his sack. Granny got there first and wouldn’t give it back. Anyway, her Christmas tree had a whole lot of stuff with other people’s name crossed out and hers written in over top.

The other day I went to Santa’s web site to see if I was still on his naughty list? Yeah, I’m still on it. While I was there, I decided to check up on a few other people and find out which list they were on. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I did. And here is what I found out. (note, the names have been somewhat changed to protect the guilty.)

Papaw - Nice, but has been naughty at times. Has shown improvement with cleaning up his room. Still has a naughty tendency to leave his socks on the floor. With a little more effort, could be near top of "nice" list.

Granny - Nice at times, but needs to be good all year, not just around Christmas time. Overall, niceness outweighs naughtiness. Was good a whole week last month!

Be careful which list you get on. Its not Santa’s birthday we celebrate at Christmas and Santa didn’t go to the cross for you. That little baby born in a manger is Jesus, the son of the most high God!!! Jesus can get your name written down in the Book of Life, thats the most important list of all to be on. I didn’t know this for a long time, and I grew up in a neighborhood full of church members?

Written By Johnny Lee Hall Dec 1, 2001

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