Anticipation

When I was a kid, Christmas eve was quite an exciting night. There were four of us and we scarcely slept at all. We would wait until my parents went to bed, and then we would wait until we heard my father snoring. Then it would begin: "Are you awake?" One by one, the four of us would all be piled in one bed whispering in the dark, trying to figure out what we were going to get for Christmas. 

"Well, we'll all get new pajamas and underwear and socks. We ALWAYS get pajamas and underwear and socks..." 

Sometimes the brave ones would sneak out to do some recon in the dark. One year, at a family party, my youngest sister got a 'Give A Show Projector.

You can't really tell but it was basically a flashlight with a lens in front of it so that you could project cartoon slides on the wall. My brother and I caught sight of that, and without one word exchanged, we knew that it was preordained that we were going to do some recon work on Christmas eve, and that this year, we were going to have light! 

That Christmas eve, we went to bed like the little angels we were, and we waited until my parents were in bed, and then we grabbed that projector and we sneaked past my parent's bedroom door and into the livingroom. We switched on the light, and beheld the wonder of it all. We did a careful and slow scan, and when we pointed that projector downward, the lens fell out of it. Unfortunately, it fell directly on the roof of a brand new tin dollhouse. 

(when up on the roof there arouse such a clatter...) 

We scared the bejeebers out of ourselves. 

Parents were awakened. 

There was a lot of yelling. 

But, anyways, that's what I remember most vividly about Christmas: the anticipation of it. 

When I grew up and had children of my own, I wanted them to have that, too. So. I always kept a wrapping paper tube behind my bedroom door. If I didn't hear whispers and footsteps by 5 or 5:30, I would slip out of bed, open my bedroom door just enough to get the wrapping paper tube into the hall, and I would bellow into it, "Ho ho ho!" There would be gasps as kids came awake, and then they would all congregate in one bedroom.  whispering excitedly to each other. They could not actually go downstairs until the clock struck six, but they would all come to congregate in the hall at the top of the stairs and whisper in the dark, waiting for the clock to bong the hour. I loved listening to them. 

That is exactly why my favorite Christmas song is this:

 

It's a silly song but there never was anything that caught the anticipation of a small child as well as that silly song.

We are going to do our Amish Christmas next Friday night. The children are excited. 

We are going to do it a bit differently. On a recent outing, Mattie said that she enjoyed seeing the light displays at Christmas. I had no idea!  I said, "Do you think that it would be okay for the kids to see the lights?" 

She said, "Oh. They would love that!"

A plan was quickly hatched. Tim and I will drive both cars up there. The guys will ride with Tim and the ladies will pile in with me, and we will head downtown to see the light displays for a half hour or so. Then we will head back up on the hill to have supper. 

It is always great fun to watch the kids eating supper, their eyes straying to the pile of gifts on the work table. I am pretty sure that they do not wrap their gifts to each other so that pile of wrapped gifts is quite a novelty. They chatter away to each other quietly in their own tongue, their eyes sneaking looks, trying to guess.  Even the oldest ones seem excited. After supper, they wait for their father to give them the signal and then the place goes nuts. 

I'm grown now. My children are grown too. William is half grown, a teenager now, too cool to get excited, and the girls are too far away for me to share fully in it, but, for an evening, I sit in a warm kitchen heated by a wood stove, lit by oil lamps, and I watch the anticipation reach a crescendo. There is screaming and chattering and much laughter, heads gathered together as they examine what they have received, sucking on their candy canes, Games are opened and played right there on the floor. 

It is such a joyous thing to be a part of, and I am grateful for it.