A Drugstore Christmas Eve

{vintage Phoenix postcard with corner Walgreens found online—perfect!}

Do you remember the feeling you’d get on Christmas Eve when you were a child?  When the sun went down, dinner was over and you knew the time was getting closer and closer to when Santa would arrive?

I sure do!

Another little girl felt that same feeling on a Christmas Eve back in 1946…

Dinner over, her father had just one more errand to run that night…a very important Christmas errand…and he said little Karen could come along with him, if she wanted to.

She wanted to.

{Don’t you just love the internet?  A few clicks and I found an image just like the car my grandparents had at the time of my Mom’s story…}

Off through the night in the shiny, copper penny-colored Plymouth they went…a drugstore in downtown Phoenix was their destination…

Parking in front of the Walgreens on the corner, her Daddy told her to wait in the car—it would only take him a minute. 

 

As Karen sat in the center of that wide front seat, she looked around her at the beautiful holiday lights all along McDowell Street…stores were closing, people rushing home for the big night…Oh, how quickly her little heart was beating!

All of a sudden, she jumped—she’d heard her name spoken—quietly, but clearly… “Karen”. 

She just knew it was Santa Claus calling her name…she just knew it! 

{fabulous tag from Crafty Secrets’ “Retro Christmas” Vintage Cuts}

In a moment, her Daddy came smiling at her through the drugstore door, got into the car, and started it up…

“Daddy!  Someone said my name—It was Santa!”, she squealed. 

Her Daddy--a very smart daddy—said, “I’ll just bet it was one of his helpers, trying to tell you that we’d better get home quickly and get you into bed so that Santa can come!”

{my love affair with plastic vintage buttons continues!}

Oh, my!  How she ever sat still in her seat all the way home, I’ll never know.  Getting home, she buttoned up her pajamas, brushed her teeth, and jumped into bed as quickly as she could!

Santa did come that night, just as she knew he would...don’t you just imagine she fell asleep to the wonder of Santa Claus knowing her very own name?!

My dear mother, Karen, still remembers that night—as clear as a Christmas bell.  She says she really did her someone say her name, and it wasn’t her Daddy…

{my newest page for my heritage scrapbook…}

This mother of mine has always kept the magic and excitement of Christmas alive in her heart.  She has passed it along to me, just as I have passed it along to my own three daughters…

On Christmas Eve, all three generations of women in our family become little girls again…

And that, my friends, is the Magic of Christmas.

 

Off to be a little girl,

Julie

LiveJournal Tags: Christmas,Karen Ostlund Smith,Phoenix,heritage album