The year was 2004 when a cute and innocent eight-year-old Nikki cheerfully skipped down the stairs to make gingerbread cookies with her grandmother. Those cookies were going to be put out for Santa. I was so excited that this jolly old fat man was going to come and bring me presents! I stopped in my tracks when I saw that a very large box had appeared in our living room.

I was just as nosey then as I am now and I stood on my tippy toes and peered over the side to see who the present was for. I was disappointed when I saw that it was for my older brother, Josh, but not as concerned as when I saw that it said ‘From Santa.’ I was incredibly confused. But it wasn’t Christmas yet and Santa hadn’t come! How could Josh have a present from Santa way before I did? I had been good that whole year and had even sent in my letter a month in advance!

I stuck my head into the kitchen where my mother and my grandma were talking about what they were going to cook for Christmas dinner. I cleared my throat to make my presence known and when I had their full attention, I explained to them my desperate confusion.

It was then that my mom sat me down with a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk to tell me that Santa wasn’t real. My parents had been the ones eating my carefully baked cookies. They had been the ones putting the brightly wrapped presents under the tree. The jolly old fat man in red wasn’t real.

My Christmases have never been the same since. A child’s imagination provoked by the mystery Christmas is one of the things that, once lost, can’t be regained. How do reindeers fly? How does one man make it all the way around the world in one night? Who REALLY eats the cookies?