The children at Number 16 were really very serious about Santa Claus.
On the fifteenth of December, Sarah, Mille, and little Paul sat at the kitchen table with their best pens and their neatest writing. The radiator clicked softly, and outside the Close lay grey and damp, but inside there was purpose.
Sarah wrote first, she sort of believed in Santa but wasn’t just totally sure. She carefully wrote
Dear Santa,
I would like a story book about Irish legends, please. The kind with heroes and monsters and old gods.
Thank you,
Sarah
Mille, who was seven, drew more than she wrote. Her letter included a picture of Barbie and Ken standing beside a bright yellow beach buggy with hearts on the wheels.
Dear Santa,
Please can Barbie and Ken have a beach buggy so they can go on adventures.
Love from Mille
Little Paul dictated his letter aloud, swinging his legs under the chair.
“Tell him I want a new game for my tablet,” he said. “One with racing cars.”
Their father folded the letters, slid them into envelopes, and walked them down to the post box at the corner of Nether Oak Close. He posted them on the fifteenth, just as always.
That evening, his phone pinged.
He read the email once, then again, then showed it to the children with raised eyebrows.
SANTA’S DELIVERY TEAM Arriving Christmas Eve — 00:06 UTC
“See?” Mille said smugly. “I told you.”
Christmas Eve arrived quietly.
By midnight, the Close was dark and still. The children were asleep upstairs, sprawled beneath duvets, dreams already filling with sleigh bells and stories.
Downstairs, Hugh and Margaret Fitzsimons sat side by side on the sofa, finishing a television programme neither of them was really watching. The credits rolled.
Margaret reached for the remote.
And then they heard it.
A heavy thump from outside.
Not once, but twice. A deliberate stamping sound, like someone testing the ground with their foot.
Hugh frowned. “Did you hear that?”
Margaret was already standing. She pulled back the curtain.
“Oh,” she said softly.
Hugh joined her at the window.
In the front garden, half on the grass and half on the path, stood a sleigh.
An actual sleigh.
Reindeer shifted and snorted, breath steaming in the cold air. One of them stood awkwardly, holding a front leg clear of the ground.
And beside the sleigh, brushing snow from a red sleeve, stood Santa Claus himself.
Margaret pressed a hand to her mouth.
Hugh opened the front door.
Santa looked up, relief flooding his face.
“Oh, thank goodness,” he said. “I was hoping someone would be awake.”
Santa explained everything in the kitchen, over a hastily made cup of tea.
“I’ve got my reading glasses on,” he admitted, tapping his nose. “Left the driving ones in my workshop jacket. So, on the way in, I drifted a bit close to Number Twelve’s satellite dish.”
He sighed.
“Poor Prancer clipped his leg. Had to make an emergency landing.”
From the window, Prancer let out a low, unhappy snort.
Hugh didn’t hesitate. “I’ll get Michael from Number Six. He’s good with problems.”
Michael arrived in slippers and a coat over his pyjamas, asking no questions at all.
He examined the reindeer, nodded once, and said, “We’ll need William. He was a vet before he retired”
William from Number Twenty-Two arrived last, carrying an old leather bag that had seen better days, and worse. He knelt beside Prancer, calm and practised, hands steady.
“A nasty gash,” he said, “but nothing we can’t fix.”
Under the garden light, William stitched, cleaned, and bandaged the leg. He gave Prancer a small injection and patted his neck.
“There you go, lad. You’ll fit to fly again just do not hit anything else!”
Prancer leaned into the touch.
Santa watched it all, eyes shining.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” he said quietly.
William wiped his hands. “No need.”
But Santa smiled in a way that suggested he disagreed.
At exactly 00:06 UTC, the sleigh lifted into the sky, bells ringing softly as it vanished into the dark.
The garden returned to silence.
Christmas morning arrived in a rush of excitement.
The children thundered downstairs and stopped short.
There were presents, exactly right ones.
Sarah found her book of Irish legends, thick and heavy, full of heroes, monsters, and gods older than memory.
Mille squealed at the beach buggy, already planning Barbie and Ken’s adventures.
Paul got his racing game and immediately began revving imaginary engines.
Later, when the house had quieted, Hugh noticed something else under the tree.
Four parcels. Plain. Neatly wrapped. With names written in careful red ink.
They exchanged glances.
Adults didn’t get presents from Santa.
There was one for Hugh, Margaret, Michael and William.
Hugh opened his first. Inside was a slim, beautifully bound notebook. On the inside cover:
For the man who manages difficult problems.
Margaret unfolded a soft green-and-silver shawl that smelled faintly of pine. Tucked into the fold:
For the one who listens in the quiet hours.
They delivered the other and Michael found a new tool, solid, perfectly balanced, engraved with words that made him laugh and swallow at the same time.
For solving problems without asking for thanks.
William opened his last.
It was a framed photograph. Him, decades younger, standing beside a horse he had once saved. On the back:
Once a healer. Always a healer.
William sat down heavily.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Later, in the Close, neighbours wished one another Merry Christmas. No one mentioned sleighs or reindeer or the faint hoof-shaped marks still visible on the path.
But each of them carried something new that day.
Not just a gift.
But the feeling, warm and undeniable, that they had been noticed by and outside benevolent force.
And far to the north of Nether Oak Close, Prancer and the other reindeer carefully landed outside the Claus residence, Prancer still bandaged but none the worse for his collision happily tucked into the fodder Mrs Claus had left out for them. As Santa and his wife went into their house Mrs Claus asked “Everything went according to plan” Santa replied “It almost never does.. but tonight was …. special” He closed the door and another on the big list by the kitchen dresser he marked a big ✓ beside 2025 and then added a *** beside it.