Nothing beats the thrill of a pillowcase stuffed with toys – even now.
So it was, so it is, so I hope it will always be. The sound of Christmas of my childhood is the sound of Christmas now, and I hope until my last year on earth. It is the marvellous thump-thump-thump-THUMP of the waves hitting Newport Beach on Sydney’s Northern Peninsula, just a hundred yards down the hill from the family beach house that my grandfather built in 1923.
For me as a child, that sound meant that after nearly a year of waiting, at last the time of “Nantucket” – the name of the house – had come again. I can remember it all so clearly because every Christmas I see similar things with my own children and their cousins …
See? I am eight years old … And there at the end of the bed I can just make out the shape of the pillowcase Santa Claus has filled some time in the never-never land of the wee hours. Of course, I am under strict instructions from my older brothers and sisters not to wake the household by turning on the light and squealing with joy at what Santa has left, but I can at least feel Santa’s pressies and work it out from there. A kite! A Tonka truck! Oh my goodness, a knife, surely a Bowie knife … yes, a Bowie knife!
And now there are stirrings from the next bunk, where Bubs lies. Bubs, I think I’ve got a Bowie knife! And now she’s feeling her presents, too. She has a doll, a dress and lots of books, including lashings of Famous Five adventures.
Within an hour we are able to crawl into Mum and Dad’s bed to show them what Santa has brought, still trying not to wake Cathy, David and Nook particularly – as they get the snakiest – and Mum and Dad seem in equal parts thrilled and amazed at our good fortune. They both agree that it is simply uncanny how well Santa Claus has been able to pick what we truly want, but Mum supposes that is probably just the reward I get for being a good boy.
And now Bubs and I must wait impatiently for everyone in the family to wake so we can show off the presents we have received, see what Santa has brought them and, most important of all, open the other presents under the Christmas tree which all in the family have given to each other. As the littlest, it is my pleasurable duty to hand these pressies out, as we all pause to see what we have given each other. A Frisbee! Thanks, Cathy.
And so it goes. Year after year, for decades, just like that.
Pure magic, the lot of it. Mind you, some years later, when I delicately broached the subject of Santa Claus with Mum, and wondered out loud how the magic had actually worked, how she and Dad had managed to pull it off and get the pressies into six sets of pillow cases without waking us, she gave me absolute short shrift, and flat out refused to even countenance the possibility that Santa was not real. It was of no moment whatsoever that at this point I was already old enough to have been sent from the field for unnecessary violence against the All Blacks. She said Santa was real, and that was that … And so he is!
Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and author. His latest book,A Simpler Time: A Memoir Of Love, Laughter, Loss And Billycarts, is published by HarperCollins.
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