Amy, the mother of two children, remembers when she used to believe in Santa Claus. Having that belief as child was the greatest fun ever. As she sat on the train, her mind drifted to when she was six years old. She remembered going to bed on December 24th eagerly awaiting Christmas morning when jolly old Santa would have left her all the toys she had been yearning for the whole year. Amy had been a very obedient child throughout the year and was certain that Santa would reward her for her good behavior. Right before she went to bed she poured a cup of milk for Santa and left him three Christmas cookies that she had made herself with the Easy Bake Oven that Santa had brought her the year before.

On Christmas morning she awoke before sunrise, ran to the living room table to make sure Santa had drank the milk and eaten the cookies, then dashed over to the tree to frantically unwrap the gifts that Santa left. Just has she began to take her Barbie doll out of its box – the very one that she had asked Santa to bring her – she ran to the window to see if Santa’s sleigh tracks were still in the snow that had fallen the night before. There were still there! The sheer magic that she felt as a child made her smile. Even though those magical Christmases ended when she discovered that Santa was a fictitious character and that her parents had bought the toys and gifts, Amy would not trade those years for anything in the world. She wanted her children, Karita and Timothy, to have the same experience for as long as they could. She wanted to make her children's Christmas memories as wonderful or more wonderful than hers had been.

Therefore, Amy was always looking for new and different children's Christmas ideas. Amy made Christmas a month long event in their household. She called it her children's Christmas extravaganza. Some of the activities included:

1.Making a ginger bread house
2.Repeating tongue twisters to see who could say them the fastest without messing up
3.Singing Christmas songs
4.Making up Christmas plays and performing them for family and friends
5.Making Christmas ornaments and arts and crafts
6.Putting Christmas puzzles together

One of her children’s favorite activities was making Christmas trees. Amy searched the Internet and found several different crafts for making Christmas trees.

For instance, they made trees out of ice cream cones. They used sugar cones, green and white cake frosting, and candy to make the cones. They turned the cones upside down and spread a thick layer of green or white frosting on them and added sprinkles and candy to decorate them.

They also made a Christmas tree out of pinecones by using green paint, glue, yarn, beads, and buttons to decorate the cones, They painted the pinecones green. After the paint dried, they used glue to attach the yarn, beads, and buttons for decoration.

Amy and her children had so much fun making Christmas trees and other gifts for family, friends, and themselves that they did not think Christmastime could get any better. However, when Santa finally came down the chimney and left an abundance of gifts under their tree, Karita and Timothy played in a magical little world that was free from all of life’s problems. Amy felt the magic, too, and knew that her children's Christmas dreams had come true.