Nine Days To Christmas: Two Santas and Three Snowmen

From The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey:

“Jack got up in the middle of the night and he saw a girl run through the trees. The next morning — we had built this little snowman, well, a little snow girl, actually — and it was knocked over and the scarf and mittens were gone. It sounds silly, but I think the child must have done it. It’s not that I mind, really. I would have given them to her if she needed them so. I’m just worried she was lost or something. Imagine, a little girl out in the woods in winter like that.”

From A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd:

“A long line of nervous, fidgeting, greedy urchins wound in and out of the aisles, shoving, sniffling, and above all waiting, waiting to tell HIM what they wanted. In those days it was not easy to disbelieve fully in Santa Claus, because there wasn’t much else to believe in, and there were many theological arguments over the nature of, the existence of, the affirmation and denial of his existence. However, ten days before zero hour, the air pulsing to the strains of “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” the store windows garlanded with green-and-red wreaths, and the toy department bristling with shiny Flexible Flyers, there were few who dared to disbelieve.”