Christmas Eve Magic

Tiny, before kindergarten age, I had no idea what Christmas was all about, only that there were yummy new things to eat and it caused lots of excitement, especially my parents who put up the real fragrant-special tree and eagerly talked about Santa Clause. My dad’s blue eyes glowed with a happiness I will always treasure and remember that night before Christmas. Well, it was just me and my younger sister then, sitting with my dad while he, dramatic as a poet actor, read Twas the night before Christmas to us.

My teensy imagination lit up like the bulbs on the tree, before lightbulbs twinkled, when you had to figure out which one had gone bad on the string and replace it before the tree would be bright with colored light again.

On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen! Those immortal words are what I remembered most about the poem that Christmas eve night. Santa Claus and his reindeer, the magnificent reindeer...More rapid than eagles his coursers they came...in my imagination I could see them flying through the night sky, the snowflakes whirling ‘round them. They looked magical, these elegant beasts with branch-like antlers. And I felt magical, light as air, all tingly fizzy inside.

I swear that poem danced in my head as we set out the hot chocolate and cookies for Santa. My eyes were filled with twinkling stars while my dad assured us that Santa would somehow make it down the chimney we didn’t have in our GI bill ranch house. I still remember heading off to bed bouncing on my tippy toes.

Kissed goodnight and tucked in, I imagined Santa in his miniature sleigh with his eight tiny reindeer flying toward us, much better than dreaming about sugar plums. And soon I heard them...the pawing and prancing of each little hoof...on my very own rooftop. Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! Santa called to his reindeer team. I heard it plain as day.

It was so real, their hooves on my roof, I woke up to the loud jingling of sleigh bells, like the ones you hear on the horse harnesses as they pull the sleigh over the snow to grandma’s house. Springing out of bed, I ran outside to a beautiful white blanket of snow, so cold on my bare feet. Santa had landed on my roof.

He waved, stepping out of the old-fashioned handsomely-carved sleigh. Prancing spiritedly on that new fallen snow were Santa’s life-size reindeer decorated in the red leather finery of their harnesses. They were exquisite creatures, their fragile-looking legs, their thick brown coats glistening with snowflakes, the drifting flakes falling from the black heavens. Their faces were noble, their eyes large and brilliant as they looked down at me.

I remember being entranced by the regal tangle of their antlers. And I wondered what it would be like to ride on one of their backs as they soared through night. Santa shouted down to me, a jolly voice reminding me he couldn’t deliver his gifts until I was back in bed.

The next morning when I dashed outside to see my dad, who was fiddling with the outdoor lights, I was surprised to see no blanket of snow, only short brown grass. But I simply ignored that tiny detail and exuberantly told my dad I knew Santa was real because I had seen him last night.

Despite my dad’s rather puzzled expression I went on to tell him about hearing the prancing hooves on the roof, about running outside and seeing Santa and all his reindeer. I think he tried to tell me it was dream. But I was so insistent in all my glorious detail, he ended up nodding and smiling. And not spoiling anything for me. Thank you, Dad.

And no one, not any playground gossiper or any kid’s cruel attempt to spoil Christmas for me, could ever convince me Santa wasn’t real. After all, I had seen Santa and his sleigh full of toys, and his reindeer...oh, his majestic reindeer too. In fact, I may have turned a few kids back to the magic of Christmas simply because I believed. I truly believed.

Until, okay, seventh grade. Laugh if you want. That’s okay. I had a Christmas spirit then, that I still treasure to this day. It was magic. It was pure magic instilled into me for a lifetime.

That lucid dream was absolutely real to me, as real as anything I have ever experienced since. That enchanted dream still feels as if I lived it, and remains as vivid inside my mind as any memory.

I originally wrote this post, back in December 2007, as part of a Christmas eve blog for Title Magic. And, as I penned I realized like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash...that I hoped the paranormal and otheworldly romance novels I was writing would be as movie-screen vivid, as magical and magnificently real for readers, as my Santa lucid dream was for me.
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Have a Merry Christmas in July

Savanna,

Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~
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Just in time for Christmas, Christmas 2012, that is...

What happens ‘When a Good Angel Falls’ ?

Being an avid listener of Coast-to-Coast am, night talk radio, famous for its paranormal topics ~ the subject of 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar ~ is one of the hottest conversations going, and only gets hotter as we come closer and closer to what some people refer to as the endtimes.

So, what if? What will occur on that magical and mystical winter solstice date of December 21, 2012 ~ that final day of the Mayan calendar?

My novel When a Good Angel Falls, answers that question with Sedona and Volcano’s unusual love story.
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Blurb:

Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012 – The end of the Mayan Calendar

What happens when a world weary, worn out incarnated angel, Sedona, who believes she is merely human has three choices after her old van breaks down? Let the Nazerazzi squad of the North American Union capture her and force her into a FEMA concentration camp? Walk out into the Arizona night desert, let the wildlife have a good meal, with the hope her death will be quick? Or does Sedona trust the mysterious stranger suddenly before her? Handsome as sin and all in black, he emerges from the darkness astride a super-speed black motorcycle.

Is he her savior from the brutal hell of end times, or is he a roving cult member of the New World Order, hunting his next blood sacrifice?

Sent from heaven to help her save humanity, Zerr Dann knows the Divine is playing its last card on Earth.
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