It's Christmas Eve...

When I was little I used to kneel on my bed and rest my cheek against the chilled glass of my bedroom window on Christmas eve, and look out on the quiet street. I loved the glow that the little white Christmas candle in the window cast on my room. My family busied themselves in other parts of the house with last-minute wrapping or wrestling a new Strawberry Shortcake bike into submission. When I woke the next morning I'd run down the hall and see that Santa had come. It was perfection.

As I got older I came to know about the melancholy that tinged this night for some. The poor needed so much that often wasn't coming, people alienated from loved ones were in pain, and war made life hell for too many. But I was raised to understand that you did the most you could to help those in need, year round, and on nights like Christmas eve you remembered them and gave thanks for what you had in your own life.

Tonight, the chilled window pane I'll lean against is in my own house, my dream house as it were, perched above a tree-lined street in this city that I adore. I live here with a man I am desperately in love with and a dog I can't seem to stop hugging. I have family who love me and tomorrow when I wake I will watch my niece delight in the fact that overnight, Santa came. I know tonight that I have more to be thankful for than ever before.

*I almost forgot to credit the photo here. It's Colin Winterbottom. He. Is. Awesome.