PeonyMagazine

  When I think about Christmas, I don’t first remember the gifts, or the food, or even the tree.  I remember a window, old, wooden, slightly chipped on the corners, and the sock I used to hang there every December. It was one of my father’s long white socks, the kind he wore to work. But in my childhood eyes, that sock was a beacon. A signal. An invitation for magic to stop by.  That window faced the street, just above a small patch of garden my mother kept alive with more hope than gardening skills. Every night leading up to Christmas, I would stare at the window as if it were a portal. That was where Santa would pause, just for a moment, long enough to drop something inside the sock before flying off to someone else’s home. My mother never corrected the geography of my fantasy. She never told me Santa came through chimneys or that stockings were supposed to hang by the fireplace. We had no chimney, and our small home wasn’t built for the traditions I saw in storybooks. ...