It’s Christmas Eve. There’s always something…expectant about this one night. Every year I spend a little time outside…it’s the quietest night of the year, as if the entire world is waiting, almost in frightened anticipation, for the magic and wonder that is Christmas.

But I’m thinking now about a quieter, more gentle Christmas magic. Earlier this evening, Judy and Jimmy woke from their dream to find the Silver Star atop their Christmas tree, and a small four-inch-high bear softly singing a song only they could hear. Now I look in on my daughter, and I watch her sleep with a half-smile on her face, next to the Crazy Quilt Dragon, and I wonder…is she, in her dreams, soaring astride the colorful rascal, laughing at her reflection in the Looking Glass Mountains, or touching off the Root Bear Ocean? Is she protected from the Inkaboos by a mighty, “Grrrr-AH!” Might she visit the Singing Tree to be lulled back to sleep, only to awake tomorrow morning excited to see what’s waiting for her under the tree?

Seventy years on, and a simple story with silly characters still has the power to make a child laugh, and tremble, and see the world with a new sense of wonder. Even after all this time, the story can become what will be a treasured memory of childhood, something that lasts long after youth is gone, a warm place to hold on to as the world grows cold. All this time, and it still holds the most powerful magic in the universe - the magic to excite and expand a child’s imagination.

And maybe…just a little…her father’s, too.