There was silence…a long, uncomfortable silence…Dad looked at Mom, Mom looked at Grandma, Grandma looked at Tom, Tom looked at Dad.The meal was great - and always was.  For Christmas Eve, Mom always outdid herself.  Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, pistachio salad, fruit salad, pie, cookies, koblaha, bitawicha, fruit cake - the table seemed to groan as the last dish was placed on the table and grace was said.

But that was over an hour ago.  The fantastic meal had been devoured, but not quite digested.

Mom cleared her throat - the silence was broken, and all eyes focused on her.

“Why don’t we clean off the table, then Tom can take you kids to go to town to see the Christmas lights,” Mom said.

ACTION!

All of us kids (and I include the adults in that statement too) sprang from their chairs and went right to work.  One packing the dishwasher, one scrapping plates, one packing leftovers into the regriderator, the balance quickly cleaning off the table.

In five minutes, what had been a table laden with debris from a fantastic meal was spotlessly cleaned.  The dishwasher was running, the last of the dishes that weren’t dishwasher safe were being washed, the floor was being swept, the counters being wiped clean - all jobs that normally would have taken us an hour, five minutes flat.

“Well, I suppose you kids had better go.” Mom would say…as everyone knew that she would, for that was the sign, Santa Claus was on his way…

Away we would pile into the family car, Tom at the helm, to “look at Christmas lights.” We would drive through town, ohhh’ing and ahhh’ing at the displays of lights and decorations.  For thirty minutes Tom was to keep us occupied, which in a town as small as ours is, wasn’t that easy, sometimes those light displays looked familiar for a reason - it was the third time we had driven past them (Tom’s one attempt at something a little more fun got him busted one year when one of his young siblings announced at dinner Christmas Day “the cookies that Tom did in the parking lot of school last night was SOOOO cool!”).

Finally, the allotted thirty minutes - the longest thirty minutes of the year - were up and the car headed towards home. We knew, we just knew, that Santa had stopped by while we were gone…

We would bust into the entry door and sure enough, there were three big bags of gifts waiting in the entry!  We would each hoist a bag and march through the kitchen into the living room where Mom, Dad, and Grandma waited with smiles on their faces.

“We thought we heard something out there!” Grandma would deadpan.

The bag with the stockings were in was opened first and the stockings handed out.  Each of us dug down into them to discover what little treasures Santa had left for us.

Once all of the stockings were emptied, we looked at Dad, who would announce after only a second or two of suspense, “Lets see what’s in these boxes!”

With that, he would kneel next to the tree and start yelling names, handing out gifts as he went and watching the paper fly.

In minutes, what had been a massive pile of gifts for eight people piled neatly wrapped under the Christmas tree was reduced to individual piles of gifts and a more massive pile of Christmas paper being scattered from one end of the living room to the other, often times with multiple colored pieces floating and wafting through the air as it was ripped and discarded in excitement.

Within thirty minutes, all of the gifts were opened, the last of the paper settled to earth, and we would all poke our heads up, smiling with that cake eating grin at everyone else in the room. That was the magical moment.

Soon, Dad would announce, “This paper can’t just sit in here,” which was the start of the next clean up phase.  The bags Santa had brought his gifts in were always, conviently enough, big garbage bags, and very quickly, the paper, ribbons, and boxes were separated - the boxes and ribbons saved to be used again next year, the paper ready for the burning barrel.

“You kids must have been good this year,” Grandma would say.

Either that, or Santa must have been very forgiving….

Merry Christmas.