Hung by the Chimney With Care.

They were never big enough.

Christmas at my house has never been the “less is more.” As a child, it was the house where Santa read an itemized list with product codes, page numbers and color selections from the Sears Christmas Wish Book and nibbled on dry shortbread before leaving his mark. He didn’t just fill the stockings and leave a few gifts under the tree. He left the entire damn sleigh in the living room.

And with that Christmas was forever engraved in shiny paper and ribbons, oranges and gold foil chocolate coins in the toe.

It wasn’t that we eschewed the genuine meaning of Christmas, but when you live where polar bears knock on your front door and the closest store in 1,000 kilometers is a trading post, Santa isn’t just someone who lives a few miles down the road. He has celebrity status.

And so it was a match made in gift-wrapped heaven that my husband didn’t just embrace ribbon-and-glitter-festooned gluttony. He wallowed in it.

Now before you sling coal, we’ve never thrown reason and financial caution to the wind. The last time we used a credit card was before our daughter arrived, and we nurse our vehicles to old age. I don’t have a closet filled with shoes and I’d rather exit a store than enter. But for one morning every year, we abandoned restraint and stockings bulged as wallets wept.

He was always the first one to wake, the smell of peppermint coffee and sticky buns floating down the hallway at 3 a.m. as he waited impatiently as the minutes ticked slowly by. Little by little he lit the house, gifts aglow in twinkling lights and stockings silhouetted against a dancing fire. And when he couldn’t stand it anymore, he coaxed us from bed whispering “Santa was here!”

But it is something more, as the Grinch knows all too well, that fills our stockings each Christmas morning.

It is the excitement of the unknown and the light in their eyes as they spy the crumbs left behind by the man in red. It is the warmth of a morning wrapped in darkness and love. It is the calm that comes when, for one morning, we all leave the frenzy behind and simply enjoy each other, bare feet and sleepy eyed.

But when he was gone Christmas was something less, not something more. And four stockings hung by our chimney with care, despite the fact that he was no longer there.

Four Christmases later, I will wake once again to the memory of peppermint coffee and little voices will rouse me with cries of “Santa was here!” Eyes will light up as bare feet dash off to see what surprises await. And in the early morning light, we will be wrapped in love, simple contentment and remember whens.

And for the first time three stockings will burst at the seams. Not four.