This little-bit is in response to fellow blogger, Things I Want to Tell My Mother, who posted a contest (challenge?) to share a Christmas memory of your mother in just 100 words…  Check out her post and jump in with YOURS–you have till December 5 to contribute.  So, 100 words exactly:

Some Christmas memories of my mother are only of my mother in retrospect—I didn’t realize at the time that the Christmas magician WAS my mother.  Santa Claus visited our house twice every Christmas Eve… Once while we performed in the church play, filling stockings and leaving a hand-written letter… A second time while we slept, leaving gifts under the tree, finishing the peanuts & beer we left out (Mommy said he’d be tired of milk & cookies), and turning his reindeer loose on our front porch, where they left hoof-prints in the snow around our water-dish-and-carrot offerings. Chapeau, Ma!