For Deirdre Siobhan

What I wanted most for Christmas in my pre-school imagination was a huggable elephant. On Christmas morning when Mother woke us I rushed to get to the Christmas tree before my brother and sister. I didn’t but I didn’t cry either. I was too busy looking at all the wonders under the tree. The usual cap pistol and holster. A coloring book and crayons, and tiny hard candy beads inside a small thick-glass airplane. My boots were filled with nuts, an apple, and each wore an orange bigger than the top of my boots. I ate the beads first. Both my brother and sister had bigger boots but Dad shared the nuts and fruit he has in his so I didn’t cry about that either.

After my brother and sister picked up their toys there was nothing left under the tree but our empty boots, orange peelings, apple cores and nut shells. There was no huggable elephant. 

I didn’t cry because early New Year’s morning Santa always stopped on his way back to the North Pole. He filled our boots again with nuts and fruit and delivered an expected gift he had forgotten to leave on Christmas day. Or perhaps an eye, mouth, and mind-popping new gift we didn’t know we wanted until we got it. Still it was a long time to wait for Santa’s return. A whole week after months of waiting for him to come on Christmas.

Mother asked if there was something I wanted that Santa didn’t bring. I told her I wanted an elephant. She looked at Dad and said, “Maybe Santa dropped it when he came in the front door. We didn’t have a chimney so Santa came in the front door. Mother opened the front door and the porch was covered with snow. We had snow in northwest Texas. One year when I was younger, there was a blizzard that closed all the schools and roads and stalled a train between Paducah and Quanah. But it was the first snow I had seen on Christmas day.

In the snow was a stuffed animal with fuzzy gray hide, pink inside its ears, and two stiffened white cotton tusks. Mother wouldn’t let me run out and get it because I was still barefooted, and she wouldn’t let me hug it after she picked it up because it was wet and would be lumpy if I hugged it. She said she would put it in the oven and when it was dry I could hug it. I wanted to cry at that. Another wait.

But almost as wondrous as the snow and the elephant in the snow was the sight of Santa’s boot prints in the snow. I ran inside, told my brother and sister and we pulled on our boots and went to the porch in our flannel longhandles. Mine and my brother’s were white. My sister’s were pink and had lace on the cuffs and collar. It was cold but we followed the boot prints hoping to see traces of Santa’s sleigh. And maybe Santa dropped something else. Around the house we followed Santa’s boot prints and toward the barn until they disappeared among other tracks that looked like dog and rabbit tracks, raccoon tracks, and hoof prints. 

I said they could be reindeer tracks. None of us knew what reindeer tracks looked like. My brother, who went to school, was skeptical. They looked like mule and cow prints to him. I didn’t expect reindeer tracks to look like mule or cow prints. My sister who had been in school longer than my brother said reindeer were special and would have special tracks. Maybe the reindeer had landed on the barn by mistake and Santa had trudged through the snow to our house to leave the presents. We felt sorry for poor Santa, but we understood how he dropped the elephant in the snow and didn’t see it when he returned to the sleigh. And we liked the story.

We ran back inside to get warm and put on clothes but I still couldn’t hug my elephant until it was dry. It wasn’t as long as waiting for Santa to return on New Year’s Day but it was still a long time, probably an hour or so, before I was able to hug my elephant. And when I did it was warm, as warm as mother’s kiss, and it was my favorite Christmas gift.

We were a farm family and I know now that some presents were mail order and didn’t arrive before Santa so my parents invented a story of Santa stopping by on New Year’s Day to comfort us until Santa returned.

I loved the tradition of Santa’s return on New Year’s Day and intended to continue it in my family. And Santa did return on New Year’s Day. Our daughter was born on that day. She’s still the greatest gift we received on Santa’s return to the North Pole. And that’s why Santa returns every New Year’s Day.