Blessed Sunday before Christmas...

GOOD SUNDAY MORNING TO ALL OF YOU!  I am thankful today for the wonderful family gathering that we had yesterday at our house! We exchanged gifts with daughter's, son-in-law and 3 grandchildren. Bill made gingerbread cookies as well as traditional one from vintage cookie cutters. (I have shared before that Bill was a baker the first 5 yrs. of our marriage and is still the best baker in the house!) We celebrate early because we go to our oldest daughter's house on Christmas Day for dinner and visiting with the rest of the Grandma and Grandpa's, friends and their children. So we get to have 2 celebrations!  Please see my post today on the TWO HAPPY blog to see some beautiful paintings depicting Christ's Birth.  Now I will share with you some Santa Info from the Santa Claus Book by Alden Perkes, Ph.D.S. This is a wonderful book for adults who will get tickled with the information about Santa and for children too. Illustrations of Santa and Elves is humorous and very colorful.

Information includes the aerodynamics of what makes reindeer able to fly and how Santa is able to fly up the chimney from instructions he learned from his Elves!  Simply delightful!
  My Dad made us go to bed on Christmas Eve very early after supper.  Knowing that I, being the baby in the family would not be able to sleep because of my excitement, the older siblings would indulge me.  While we were in bed, Mom and Dad put the presents under the tree.  Dad would then make sled tracks leading away from the porch and down the side yard and then they disappeared.  He would stay by the open front door and tell my Mom to call us quick to come downstairs as we were missing Santa who was just leaving and he would ring a little bell behind his back for the sound of Santa's sleigh.  We knew Daddy did it but it did not matter.  We loved the tradition and the excitement of it all.  Then we were allowed to open gifts.  On Christmas Day, Dad's two sisters would visit bringing tanagerines, nuts, ribbon candy and a gift for each of us five children.  That is when Daddy would have my brother and I sing the Christmas Carols for them.  Happy memories from simpler times....
Santa's 12th Magic Word to rise up chimneys: "Huppy Huppy Ho-Ho-Ho! must be said with a broad smile, and with the finger on the side of the nose.  Works to make an elf go up into the air.  The elves taught this spell to Santa to enable him to go up Chimneys."