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Christmas Without Littles

Julie Ballantyne Brown
4 min readDec 20, 2021

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Keeping the magic

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

There’s something to be said for the magic of Santa.

Think what you will, the old fellow has had quite the following since Clement Moore and Thomas Nast brought his legend to life almost two hundred years ago. Beloved by generations of children and their parents alike, the idea of Santa doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

My kids are all grown up now, ranging from 18 to 24 years old, and Santa is just a fond memory in our house. While our Christmases are still fun, they’re different.

When our boys were small, Christmas was hectic. Really, really, hectic. We had a lot of places to be, there was so much preparation, and I was always exhausted. But the weeks and days leading up to Christmas and the Christmas morning wakeups were the best with three small boys.

We used to rock out to Christmas music, especially Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”, dancing all around our house, Santa hats on. There was cookie decorating with tons of sprinkles, and sparkly reindeer food sprinkled on the snow outside on Christmas Eve to light the way. There were excited countdowns to Christmas and so many lists, painstakingly scrawled in crayon, requesting puppies, baby sisters, and Star Wars Legos. I still have some of those lists, folded up in my dresser drawer along with…

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Julie Ballantyne Brown
Julie Ballantyne Brown

Written by Julie Ballantyne Brown

Future London resident. Follow Julie on Twitter: @BrownBallantyne or on FB and Instagram: @JulieBallantyneBrown

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