A Captured Santa Claus by Thomas Nelson Page

Holly Hill was a place for Christmas! Holly Hill, the old rambling / Stratford homestead in Virginia, on its high hill, looking down the / long slope and across the wide fields to the far woods rimming the sky. / From Bob, the veteran, within a month of his teens, down to brown-eyed / Evelyn, with her golden hair floating all around her, when Christmas / came everyone hung up a stocking, and the visit of Santa Claus was the / event of the year.

They went to sleep the night before Christmas -- or rather they went to / bed, for sleep was long far from their bright eyes -- with delightful / expectations and thrills along their backs, and with little squeakings / and gurglings, like so many little white mice, and if Santa Claus had / not always been so very prompt in disappearing up the chimney before / daybreak he must certainly have been caught. For by the time the / chickens were crowing in the morning there would be an answering / twitter through the house, and with a patter of little feet and subdued / laughter small, white-clad figures would steal through the dim light of / dusky rooms and cold passages, opening doors with sudden bursts, and / shouting "Christmas gift! " into darkened chambers, at still sleeping / elders. Then they would scurry away in the gray light to rake open the / hickory embers and revel in the exploration of their bulging, / overcrowded stockings. Not Columbus was to be envied when those / discoveries were being made. What was a new world to those treasures! / The thrill of the new jack-knife remains after forty years -- it had four / blades, each worth a province. Envy Columbus? Perish the thought!