Naughty or Nice

Twas not yet dawn on this blustery Christmas morn when I heard a frantic pounding on our front door. I hastened down the stairs to see who could be in distress at this early hour. You can only imagine my surprise when I opened the door to find an elderly gentleman dressed in red from head to toe.

"Mrs. Whittington, you have to help me," he exclaimed. "I got all the way back to the North Pole in the wee hours of the morning when I discovered several gifts in the bottom of my sack. They were all meant to have gone to children in the Niagara Peninsula. Oh, I'm getting so careless and forgetful in my old age, and I just can't let those dear children wake up this morning to nothing. I had to return right away, and so I did. The problem is that my reindeer got as far as your roof, and that's as far as they can go. They are up there now, barely able to stand; they are that exhausted. They can't go a step further."

Seeing as my brain functions best in the early hours of the morning, I had the perfect solution for dear old St. Nick. "Well it has been snowing all night," I said, "so if you will just help me shovel, I think we can get my swanky red car out of the garage. I know you will be breaking tradition, but we can use my car to deliver the gifts to all the good little boys and girls. I happen to have a bail of straw. We can spread that in my garage. The reindeer can rest there while we are gone."

In less than an hour we were off, driving with caution through the blustery snow, delivering gifts to children in Beamsville, Grimsby, West Lincoln, and Font Hill and even to one elderly woman with rollers in her hair in Welland who gave us each a fresh muffin straight from her oven. What great fun we had. Santa decided that he might create quite a stir if he scooted down the chimney during the breakfast hour, so he chose to knock on each door instead. When the door was opened, he exclaimed, "I had to shovel, shovel, shovel so that I can ho, ho, ho."