The following is an excerpt from my soon to be released novel Sticks and Stones.

The year is 2000! The world didn’t come to an end at midnight on December 31, 1999 as predicted by the naysayers. I read somewhere that in the 20th century nearly 400 million lives were lost to wars, genocide and mass murders. We also, in that century saw development of the greatest technologies the world had known. Science, physics, biology turned quite evolutionary. What a blessing just to be alive!

“On The First Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me…” tune was running through my head as I maneuvered the dense traffic on US Highway 13, heading home after a taxing work day. It was January 5 and Old Christmas Eve. My mind drifts backward to 1949 when I was six years old:

I am sitting at my mother’s knee while she patiently removes the brown paper sack wrappers that cause my brunette curls to bounce softly on my shoulders. I am picking-teasing-playing with my baby sister, Pam, who is four years old and is sitting on Mama’s lap. She is as usual in a pout, with her bottom lip thrust outward. She pulls and tugs at each curl my Mama unwinds, but I don’t mind because I love my baby sister passionately.

Mama is recounting the story of Old Christmas… how, way back in the days of Julius Caesar the Roman year was organized around the phases of the moon… and how, before the calendar was reformed, England celebrated Christmas on the 6th of January and that is why in some parts of Great Britain, people still call the day Old Christmas. It makes no sense at all to my sister or me as we are enchanted solely with our Mama’s voice and what a good storyteller she is.

We feel a particular excitement this night because we expect Santa will be back to leave a small token gift in recognition of just what good little girls we assuredly are. All at once Mama became quiet, placing her pointing finger softly over her lips signaling us to be quiet. She gently picked up the glass kerosene oil lamp and held it near the window, turning the wick up a bit to increase the intensity of the flame for better visibility. The heat from the lamp left a kind of halo-rainbow effect on the frosty window pane. Suddenly, there he was! We were able only to catch a glimpse, but without a doubt we knew, we just knew this was Santa Claus!

January 6, twelve days after Christmas Day is the Day of Epiphany, epiphany is Greek for “appearance.” January 5 is the Eve of Epiphany. Most Christian faiths believe it was this precise night over 2000 years ago that the Three Wise Men found the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. The 12th day of Christmas then is in commemoration of the day in which Jesus appeared to the Gentiles as our Savior.