Our Secret Santa

We loved our new house!  What fun it was to live in Gilbert; close to where I taught school, in the country but still near shopping, and especially next to mom and dad.  It seemed like we had moved to heaven.

Our first Christmas in Gilbert was exciting.  Decorating a new house, putting up Christmas lights, baking goodies for our neighbors and buying presents for friends and family kept us happy and busy, but I have a tendency to overdue, and this year was the same. 

In my heart, I still wanted Christmas for my kids to be like it was for me.  I wanted them to feel the magic of the season, the joy of family and friends and traditions.  Since my divorce, things just hadn't been the same.

"Does it seem to you that the more presents you get the less happy they make you?"  I'd asked one year after all our gifts were opened.  "It's like we get saturated, and then greedy, instead of thankful for what we have."

Part of the problem was that the kids got toys from me, then they went to their dad's and had Christmas all over again.  There was just too much.  Thinking about that during the year had caused me to want to find a way to help my children have the joy of Christmas without the selfishness.

"How about if we just ask Santa for one big present, something everyone wants, instead of everyone asking for stuff for themselves?" I suggested, hoping that might take some of the selfishness out of the season.

The first year we tried this everyone wanted a trampoline, so it worked well.  The next year it was harder to come up with something, but we still tried.  This first year in our new house, though, I was out of ideas.  We needed a new VCR, but the kids weren't really excited about that.  On the other hand, while I was looking for ideas I ran across some presents I thought the kids would like, but would never ask for.  Why not let Santa surprise them with these presents?

I decided I would pretend that someone was doing the Twelve Days of Christmas for our family.  Each night I put a little present out on our front door step, so the kids thought we had a Secret Santa.   Then I talked with my brother-in-law who had a friend who liked playing Santa.  He arranged for him to come to our house on Christmas Eve to deliver the last secret gifts for me.

Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, just before it was time for us to go to our annual Swedish Smorgasbord with Grandma Johnson, the doorbell rang.  Alyssa answered the door.  There stood Santa, holding a big bag of presents on his shoulder. 

 "Mom," she called in an excited voice.  "Mom, come here!"   I'd been listening for the doorbell, so I hurried into the front room, laughing at her surprised face, and invited Santa in.  "Hey you guys," I called the rest of the family.  "There's someone here to see you!"

It took awhile to gather up the other kids.  The big girls had been down in their bathroom, fixing their hair and getting ready for our party, and the boys were playing, but once they heard that Santa was here they hurried in. 

"Well," Santa began, with a huge smile on his face, "I was on my way to a Christmas party when someone stopped me and asked if I could do them a favor."

The kids looked at him expectantly.

"These people told me they had been playing Secret Santa for you the last couple of weeks, and they asked if I would deliver your last presents for them.  Would you like some presents?"

"Yes!" the kids yelled, so Santa started handing out his gifts.  There was a Holly-hobby doll for Holly, doll really named Alyssa for Alyssa, and an actual Linnea doll for Linnea. (I'd discovered it months before in a catalog and it inspired me to put this whole plan together.) I'd decided the boys wouldn't care if their gifts matched their names or not, so Russell and Stephen just got regular toys.

As soon as he'd handed out the presents, our special Santa said goodby and hurried off into the dusk.  After he was gone the kids rounded on me and wanted to know who he was.

"It was Santa Clause," I told them. 

"Yeah," but who was it really," they persisted. 

"I don't know what you mean," I laughed happily.  "Santa is Santa."

The big kids realized then that I wasn't going to talk to them about Santa in front of Alyssa and Stephen, who still believed, but as soon as they were gone they tried again.

"Come on, mom," Linnea and Holly and Russell demanded.  "Who played Santa Clause for us?"

"I'm sorry," I told them confidentially, "but I really didn't know that guy, (and I really didn't.  My brother-in-law fixed the whole thing up and I didn't even know Santa's name.)   "Whoever our Secret Santa was must have hired him."

It tickled me that the kids got such a big kick out of having a Santa they didn't recognize.  Years later, after the dolls and toys had long been forgotten, they still talked about that Secret Santa. They assured me they'd known all along that I was the one giving them the gifts, but the mystery Santa brought some magic into our home that year, and it sure was fun.