On This Day in History: December 24

Jalál (Glory), 14, Masá’il (Questions), 173 BE - Saturday, December 24, 2016 AD about 11:09 AM Pacific Standard Time 

On this day in 1946 my mother gave birth to a bouncing baby girl. All right I don't remember if I was bouncing or not, but I was probably crying or maybe I was singing. For all I know I could have been reciting poetry because I don't remember since I'd just been born. Today I turned 70 years old, so I decided to look at some of the events that happened on this day in history.  

I found several events that occurred in December 24 over the past several hundred years. However, only one of those events intrigued me enough to mention it in this blog post. That event occurred in 1955 when NORAD begin tracking Santa Claus. It seems an ad in a Colorado paper misprinted Santa's phone number. The number that was printed in the ad was to NORAD and the man in charge of the base at that time told his people to give the children who called Santa's current location.  

I was 9 years old at the time, so that explains why I have fond memories of this tradition.  I'm not going to mention anymore of the historical event that happened on this historic date because none of the other interest me as much as the tracking of Santa. Even though I no longer celebrate Christmas, I still listen to the news on Christmas Eve night to find out where Santa is located on his sleigh ride across the heavens. 

 

A memory from my childhood: Countdown to Christmas

Istijlál (Majesty), 17 Qawl (Speech), 167 BE – Thursday, December 9, 2010 about 10:40 AM Pacific Time

When I was a child Christmas preparation began on Black Friday. Grandpa would pile my three siblings and me into the car and we would go Christmas tree shopping. Then on December 1, the Countdown to Christmas would begin. We always knew how many days until Santa Claus came through the window. We did not have a fireplace, so the Jolly Old Elf could not come down our chimney.

Each day in December, we would wake up, look at the calendar and count the days until Christmas. Today there are sixteen days left until Christmas. As a child, the number of days until Christmas was very important because we knew Santa Claus was watching and knew “who was naughty and who was nice”. I never did figure out what scale he used to determine “naughty” or “nice”, I simply knew that getting presents meant being nice.

On December 24, the day before Christmas Mom or Grandma would bake Christmas cookies. We always saved Santa Claus, Snowman, and Reindeer cookies for Santa. We would place the cookies, with a tall glass of milk, on the coffee table close to the tree. The next morning we would have presents under the tree and the cookies and milk were gone.