Christmastime

I love Christmastime. While I say that Halloween is my favorite holiday, Christmastime (starting Black Friday and ending on Christmas day) is my favorite time of year. There's something magical in the air. There's the twinkling lights and dressed up trees. Scarves and knit hats. Mittens. Galoshes (I still need to get me a pair of those!). And, most importantly, Santa.

While I was at work today, I had to fix a window display that I broke last night. LOL. We have large-bulbed Christmas lights in our front windows, framing the marketing behind the glass. As we were walking out of the door last night, I knocked a part of the marketing over and broke a bulb in the string of lights. The entire time I was working on fixing (and eventually replacing) the string, I watched people take their kids to see Santa in our mall.

Santa's photo set up is right outside my store, so I see Santa everyday that I work (since November 1st, or sometime soon after that). Often, he sees me coming down the hall and waves at me. It totally makes my day. I love Santa. I believe in the magic of Santa. And today I witnessed the magic of Santa.

I saw a grown man with special needs go up to Santa, sit on his lap, and talk to him for a good 10 minutes. Not once did I ever see a hint of annoyance or any sort of negativity in Santa's face. Santa was engaged and shared this man's excitement for whatever they were talking about. It very nearly made me a blubbering mess right there in the front window of our store. I'm tearing up just remembering what I saw. It was really the most awesome thing I had seen in quite a long time.

As we enter adolescence, we are encouraged to stop believing in magic and these mythical characters of our childhood. Santa. The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. I'm still not sure about the Easter Bunny, and I know that my mom was the Tooth Fairy because I found my baby teeth when I was a teenager, but I still believe in Santa. I saw him work his magic today, so I know he's real.

Happy Christmastime, everyone. I hope you all get to see some magic of your own.