Lily looked outside facing the white pane of her window and put the lit candle down in front of it, and smiled. It was one day before Christmas. Her mom was making hot chocolate, a home-made recipe, just for her and Lily in the kitchen. Dinner was already on the table. Lily loved hot chocolate, really loved them. She had hot chocolate everyday right before bed and she was just happy to have a reason to have more hot chocolate: Christmas.

Lily Lovestein was 6 years old. She lived in Nampa City, Idaho. Every winter, Lily would go outside and sledded all around. She had just come back from sledding, and now she was roasting marshmallows by the fireplace, making them gold, just the way she liked it. Then, she ate the outside part first, and then roasted them again because she didn’t like the soft parts.

Suddenly, the door bell rang. Lily being Lily, she ran to the door as fast as she could with marshmallows all over her hands. She opened the door without asking who was there. Lily knew already, it was her dad. As soon as her dad came in, she smothered him in hugs, kisses, and marshmallows. “Daddy! Want some marshmallows and hot chocolate?” Lily asked eagerly.

“Sure, Lil. Anything for you.” said her dad, as he stole Lily’s hot chocolate.

“Hey!”

“Ha-ha. Now that’s some good hot chocolate. Let’s go eat dinner!”

Now the whole family was together. Therefore, they could start eating Christmas dinner. Mrs. Lovestein turned on the radio by the TV and “Silent Night” was playing. It finally felt like Christmas.

On the circular dining room table sat a huge ham in the middle, the entrée. There were buffalo wings, shrimp quesadilla, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, caeser salad, butter nut squash soup, and crème brulee. Apparently, all of Mrs. Lovestein watching Food Network has paid off.

“You made this? Laura, did you really make this? This is out of this world!” exclaimed Mr. Lovestein.

“Yes, I did, George.” said Mrs. Lovestein as she hugged him.

Lily had eaten so much that it was amazing how she could fit everything inside her small body. She ate everything except for the green bean casserole. She never liked green beans. No wait, she hated green beans.

“Mom, these are the best buffalo wings I’ve ever had!” said Lily

“Thank you, honey” Mrs. Lovestein replied.

After they ate dinner, Lily really got to decorating the already over decorated house. She put up a sign that said “Merry Christmas” on her bedroom door. Lily, instead of red socks by the fireplace, she put red mittens with a little note that Santa could read. It read, “Please put the gift under the tree, Santa. I don’t want my gift to be burned. The cookies are on the sofa. One of my friends broke my little table. Love, Lily L.” Lily smiled at her own letter to Santa, imagining his grinning just like her when he read the note.

Mr. Lovestein turned on the TV to weather channel. “There will be a blizzard tonight-.” He turned the volume up. “There is a blizzard coming around Nampa City. It is very cold outside and it’s already snowing. Everybody grab a blanket and have a warm Christmas Eve.” explained the anchor.

‘Oh, no,’ thought Lily, ‘how is Santa going to come in a blizzard? What if he hits a pine tree on his way to my roof because he can’t see through the blizzard? What if he decides not to come?’

Mrs. Lovestein saw right through Lily and hugged her. “It’s okay, Lily, Santa has a super good vision he can see through everything. Don’t worry honey. Want some chocolate chip cookies?” and gave Lily a huge cookie. It did make her feel better, but not enough.

At bed time, Lily’s parents let Lily sleep with them. She was too worried about Santa getting hurt rather then getting the gift because if Santa gets hurt, he was going to break thousands and thousands of children’s hearts, and kids would stop believing in him. She went to her parents’ bed and squeezed between her dad and her mom. It felt better this way. She could feel the love from her family. That made her worries drop from a level of screaming to a whisper. Slowly, her eyes began to close and fell asleep.

It was Christmas day! Lily suddenly opened her eyes. She looked from side to side. Her parents had already awakened. It wasn’t fair; they should have awakened her too. Anyway, Lily jumped out of bed, ignoring the head rush. Then, she ran as fast as she could to the living room. Also, that’s where the Christmas tree is.

“Merry Christmas! Good morning sleepyhead,” her mom and dad said as one. Everyone had a smile on their face. Lily turned her head 180 degrees to look at the Christmas tree. Santa has come! There were 5 gifts under the tree. For some kind of reason, even though Lily was delighted about the gifts, she ran to her red mittens first. Santa would have seen the mittens first, right? That’s where Santa usually saw first. In her mittens, there was a new piece of paper, with glitter everywhere with words “Santa’s Workshop” on it. It said, “Dear Lily, Merry Christmas! I’ll come around next year and thanks for worrying about me, but I’m as strong as steel and my eyes are 20/20 so don’t worry. Merry Christmas again and open up your gifts! Love, Santa”

“Mommy, Daddy, Santa wrote me a letter! Santa wrote me a letter!” yelled Lily and gave the note to her dad. Without waiting for her dad’s reaction, she ran to the Christmas tree and saw her gifts wrapped in red and green. They were so pretty she didn’t want to ruin the wrapping, but what could a 6-year old girl do but rip the wrappings apart? Soon, the wrapping paper was all over the place, and Lily saw her dream gift from Santa, a ticket to the Santa’s Workshop.