Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:11:00 -0700
From: Sandi Randolph <sandirandolph@gmail.com>
Subject: A Christmas Story

Please Note: The following story is fictional.  Any perceived similarity to
real persons, either living or dead, is strictly coincidental.  Although
it's intended primarily as an entertaining story with alternative sex, the
"story" part takes priority over the "sex".  If you are looking to read a
story that is pure sex with almost no plot, don't bother with this one.
Also, if you are below the legal age or fiction of a sexual nature is
illegal where you live, please leave now. To comment please feel free to
email me at sandirandolph@gmail.com.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It had been a pretty good year for both Mike and Sam. Mike had finished his
MBA work that May and had landed a great job that didn't even call for him
moving away from the college town he'd grown to love. Sam had graduated
with his BS degree one semester early just the previous week and was
looking for a job with several good prospects. And so the two roommates
were both in a festive mood as they scoured the mall together, shopping for
some holiday decorations for the small 2-bedroom house they shared.

Although the two got along well enough, to say they were "close friends"
would be a bit of a stretch. Mike had found the rental house three years
before and signed the lease back when he was on a full scholarship for
football. His scholarship included a room-and-board stipend that was more
than sufficient to cover both the monthly rent and his food, But an injury
from a car accident had ended both his football career and his scholarship.
Without the "full ride" he was forced to work his way through school and
had been struggling to keep up with his monthly rent, and so he advertised
on a campus bulletin board for a housemate.

When Sam answered the ad Mike had some misgivings at first. He was far from
homophobic, but he was still uneasy about having an openly gay man for a
housemate. Nevertheless, and despite the ribbings Mike got from several of
his jock friends, the two worked out an amicable arrangement. They would
share the house and utility and food expenses, but nothing more. Mike would
keep the master bedroom with Sam moving into the smaller one. Mike would
pay 2/3 or the housing costs while Sam paid 1/3 and would take care of all
the household chores that Mike disliked so much. They agreed that their
private sex lives would stay private and that neither would embarrass the
other by bringing any sexual partners into their shared home when the other
was there. Not that either had that much of a social life, since between
school and their respective part-time jobs they'd both been too busy for
much dating, much less active sex lives.

It had worked out well for three years, and neither saw any reason to
revise the deal once they'd completed their studies unless one or the other
had to move because of the careers they were embarking on. They really did
have quite a bit in common, their sexual orientations notwithstanding. Both
had been business majors with similar interests except for Mike's love of
football. Neither had any family, with Mike being an only child whose
parents had been killed in the same car accident that had caused the injury
that had ended his football career and Sam having been the very accidental
offspring of an addict mother, and having grown up in foster homes. Sam
guessed his birth mother was still alive somewhere, but had no desire to
contact her.

So now, looking forward to their first Christmas where neither was facing a
tuition bill or the expense of textbooks, they both felt somewhat
financially liberated and decided to splurge and decorate the house for the
holidays for the first time. Which brought them to the mall in search of
decorations, even if neither had anyone to buy gifts for. They were
discussing various ideas for lights and decorations as they passed the mall
Santa and were about to go into Sears when they heard a voice, in a loud
"stage whisper", somewhere behind them.

"PSST! MIKE! SAM! Come over here a minute!" They turned to see the mall
Santa, for the moment devoid of a line of little children waiting to sit on
his lap, giving them the "come hither" gesture with his index finger.

The two young men looked at each other quizzically, wondering which of
their acquaintances might know both their names and might be working as a
mall Santa this season. He didn't look familiar to either of them.
Nevertheless, their curiosity piqued, they turned around and walked over to
the Santa who was sitting in the large padded chair that passed for Santa's
throne.

Leaning toward the Santa's ear and whispering, so as to not spoil the
illusion for any children that might be close by, Mike asked the Santa
"Just who the heck ARE you?"

The older man laughed. "Why, I'm Santa Claus, of course! Isn't that
obvious?"

"Okay," Sam chuckled, going along with the gag for the moment, "Santa or
whoever the heck you are. What do you want from us?"

"Oh, my goodness Sam! I don't want anything FROM you! I just wanted to let
you boys know that I realized this fall that I've been overlooking the two
of you somehow for years, and just realized my error. So this year I'm
going to do something extra special. When I start making my rounds next
Saturday night I'll not overlook you again, and this year I'll be bringing
gifts AND I'll be granting each of you your deepest and most heartfelt
wish."

"Yeah! Right!" Mike snorted. "Like you can grant wishes like some sort of
genie!"

"Oh, but I most certainly CAN!" the Santa replied, touching the tip of his
nose. "There's a lot of magic in this nose of mine you know!" Just then a
little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, was hesitantly approaching the
trio. "You boys had better go about your business now. I have my own
business to tend to here. Just don't be surprised to find a lot of nice
gifts under your tree Sunday morning, followed by wishes fulfilled."

Shaking their heads in disbelief, Mike and Sam went on their way and didn't
think anything more about the strange encounter until Christmas Eve. When
they had finished trimming the tree they each went to their rooms and came
back with the small gifts they'd gotten for each other. Since neither had
anyone else in their lives, they'd taken to exchanging gifts with each
other the year they'd started sharing the house, and had always opened them
on Christmas Eve. Mike was about to rip the wrapping from the box Sam had
produced when Sam stopped him.

"Wait! Maybe we should just put them under the tree and open them tomorrow
morning, along with all the toys that Santa's gonna bring us!"

Mike couldn't help but laugh at the offhand reference to the mall Santa's
promise. "Oh, wow! I'd forgotten all about that crazy old coot! But
. . . why not? We've never had a Christmas tree before, and it's been years
since I've had anything to open on Christmas morning, so . . . sure! Let's
just open them in the morning. It'll make it seem more like Christmas I
suppose."

Sam prepared a batch of homemade eggnog from scratch, which Mike spiked
liberally with rum, and the two relaxed, drinking and talking, until
bedtime when both were more than just slightly buzzed. They retired to
their own bedrooms and were soon sound asleep. Neither of them heard a
sound when a fat old man in a red suit, trimmed with white fur, magically
materialized in their living room and began taking gift-wrapped packages
from a large sack, placing each one carefully under and around the tree.

In the morning Sam was the first to stagger, slightly hung over, from his
room to the kitchen to start fixing their breakfast. He had the coffee
going and was starting on the bacon and eggs when he heard Mike shout.

"SAM! Did you see this? Can you BELIEVE it?"

Sam quickly turned off the flame under the frying pan of bacon and rushed
out to the living room, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw the array
of packages under the tree.

"What the . . . ?" Beyond those two words he was speechless.

Mike was beaming broadly. "I know it's hard to believe, but . . . I'm
beginning to think the old guy was for real. Let's just hold off on
breakfast until we see what's in these packages. They're probably just
empty boxes, but . . . we'll never know, I guess, until we start opening
them up." Sam walked over to the tree and removed the note he saw resting
in the branches and read it aloud.

"Dear Mike and Sam,

As you open each gift a small piece of your innermost wish will come
true. When you've finished opening them your dreams will be reality.

With Love,

Santa"

Mike got down on his hands and knees and started looking at the tags on the
packages. "It looks like most of them are for you! There are only a couple
of things here for me, so I suppose you should start. Pick one."

Nervously, Sam picked up one of the packages with his name on the tag and
began tearing the wrapping paper off. He opened the plain white box, just a
little, and peeked inside before quickly closing the box again as his face
took on a reddish hue.

"Well?" Mike asked. "What is it?"

"I can't . . . no! This doesn't make any sense!" Neither Mike nor Sam
noticed that Sam's voice was just a tiny bit higher in pitch than usual.

"Oh, come on! Tell me! What's in it?"

Blushing profusely, Sam slowly took the lid off the box again and pulled
back the layer of tissue paper that partially obscured the view of the lacy
pink satin bra and panties inside the box. "I think Santa made a mistake!
These can't possibly . . . they must have been intended for some girl
somewhere."

"Yeah," Mike replied. "It looks like old Santa screwed up there. Try
opening another one and let's see what you get."

Sam selected another package, slightly larger than the first and removed
the wrapping. When he opened the box he got a funny look on his face and
showed Mike the contents . . . a lacy black bra, tiny black thong panties,
a black garter belt and a pair of off-black nylon stockings.

"I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm beginning to think that Santa's
lost a few of his marbles," Sam told Mike. "Why don't you open one of yours
and let's see if your stuff is as crazy as what he brought me?"

Mike picked out one of the few packages under the tree with his name on it
and removed the wrapping. Inside the box were three pairs of expensive silk
men's boxer shorts, all in the colors and cut that he preferred, but of an
obviously more expensive material than he would buy for himself.

"A little pricier than I'd buy," Mike noted, "but nothing really
outlandishly out of the ordinary. Try another package Sam. Maybe Santa's
elves just got a few gifts for some girl named Samantha in with your
stuff. Accidents happen you know, and I'll bet Santa's shop is pure bedlam
just before the big day."

Sam nodded and reluctantly began unwrapping another package. For a change,
this time at least it wasn't lingerie. Still, a complete makeup kit with an
assortment of foundations, lipsticks, eye shadows, eyeliners, mascara, nail
polishes and other cosmetics wasn't quite what he expected. He tried again,
and the fourth package contained a silk peach-colored nightgown with
cream-colored lace trim.

"Look Mike," he exclaimed. "This really isn't doing any good. I'm going to
go finish fixing breakfast. We can sort through this mess after we eat,
okay?"

"NO! WAIT!" Mike had finally noticed that Sam's voice was higher in pitch
than it had been previously, and there was more. Sam's hair seemed to have
grown more than inch since they'd started opening packages. And there was
something else. As Sam bent over to slide the box with the robe back under
the tree the loose top of the somewhat threadbare terrycloth robe he was
wearing had fallen open a few inches and what Mike saw through the slightly
enlarged gap both shocked him and excited him.

"There's something very strange happening here Sam. Put your hand inside
the top of your robe and tell me what you feel."

Sam looked at Mike with a puzzled expression on his face, but did as his
housemate asked. He jumped when an electric-like shock ran through his
body, the result of his fingernail brushing against a nipple that was twice
its normal size and sticking out much more than it should. He gasped as his
hand molded around a small but unmistakably breast-like mound of soft
tissue. His hand immediately moved to the other side of his chest and felt
the same thing. Unbelievable as it seemed, in the past few minutes he had
developed a small pair of breasts. Although quite small, there was no doubt
in his mind . . . these were the breasts of a woman.

"My God! It . . . it can't be! It's impossible! I never imagined . . . not
really!"

"What?" Mike asked him. "Do you know what's going on here?"

"That Santa Claus! He said our `deepest and most heartfelt wishes' would
come true! But . . . I can't believe this! It's impossible!"

"What? What is that you wished for?"

"Well, I didn't believe him at the time, so of course it's not like I
closed my eyes and made a wish at a wishing well or something, but
. . . well, ever since I was little I had wished . . ."

"You've had a wish all your life? What was it?"

"Well, when I was little I always envied the girls in the neighborhood,
because they got to wear such pretty dresses while my foster mothers always
dressed me in jeans and t-shirts. Then as I grew older, and realized I was
attracted to boys, I envied the prettiest girls because all the best
looking and most popular guys ended up dating those girls. Lots of times I
found myself wishing that I was a girl so that I could wear pretty dresses
and have the good-looking guys trying to get into MY panties. But I never
. . . I never thought it could come TRUE!"

"Well Sam, the note said that a small piece of your dream will come true
with each package you open, so open a few more and let's see what happens."

With hands shaking, Sam opened more packages, each containing some form of
feminine item. There was more lingerie, dresses, skirts, blouses,
stockings, cosmetics, jewelry and toiletries, all gender-specific for a
woman. As he opened the packages he could feel a slight but definite change
in one part of his body or another. By the time he was two-thirds of the
way through the assortment of presents he could feel his breasts pulling at
his chest and felt the weight of hair that was 10 inches longer than before
cascading across his shoulders. His robe no longer came close to fitting
him, as his body in general had shrunk about four sizes. Embarrassed, he
turned to Mike.

"Look buddy . . . I need to . . . I need to take a break and . . . well,
change into something that's going to fit me better. This robe is hanging
on me like an oversized sack now. I'll be back in a few minutes." He
gathered up most of the presents he'd already opened and took them back to
his room.

Mike just sat and stared at the large number of presents still to be opened
while he waited for Sam to return. Back in his bedroom Sam had taken off
his old robe and closely examined his new body. His breasts were apparently
now fully developed. He looked at the tag on the lacy pink bra that had
been in that first package and noted that it was a 34-C. Unaccustomed as he
was to putting on a bra, it took him a few minutes to get the three hooks
in back into the correct little eyelets, but after a few minutes he
managed. His breasts, although somewhat larger than a few minutes before,
still fell short of filling out the cups, but the bra did give him some
support so that the tits were no longer feeling like heavy weights attached
to his chest.

It didn't take much effort to slip off his shorts. They were now several
inches too large in the waist and would have fallen down to his ankles all
by themselves were it not for the fact that his hips were now a little
wider and his butt was . . . well . . . "fuller" is probably the best way
to describe the rounded globes of flesh that would cushion him the next
time he sat down. Once he slipped out of the underwear he got his first
look at his cock. It was now only as big around as his little finger and
only about half as long as that digit. He stepped into the lacy pink
panties that went with the bra and pulled the tiny garment up into place,
relishing the sensation of the soft silk against his groin. He put on the
peach-colored silk wraparound robe and slipped his feet into a pair of
peach open-toed slippers before returning to the living room.

"Well?" Sam asked Mike. "Did you open any of yours while I was gone?" He
surprised himself with the voice that came from his mouth . . . a little
deep for a woman's voice, but sexy in a sort of sultry way.

"No, I felt it was only fair to wait for you to get back." Mike turned to
look at his returning housemate and his jaw dropped. "OH MY GOD! You look
. . . you're BEAUTIFUL! And you look so sexy in that . . ." The robe was
sheer enough for Mike to be able to see the outline of the bra and panties
that Sam wore beneath the robe, enough even to be able to make out the
pattern of the lace trim on the lingerie.

Sam smiled a little sheepishly. "Yeah, I kinda had that same thought when I
looked at myself in the mirror. And I haven't even tried putting on any of
the makeup!" He sat down next to Mike, a newborn instinct of some sort
making sure that his legs stayed together so as to not flash a "panty shot"
to anybody who might be looking as he did so.

"Well, go ahead and open a few. I'm dying to see what sort of wish of yours
will come true as YOU unwrap things."

Mike selected two of the packages marked for him and took them back to the
couch. He slowly and methodically removed the wrapping from packages that
contained a set of men's toiletries and then an expensive dress
shirt. Thankfully, both were definitely gifts for a man. They both
continued to open Santa's gifts, with Sam getting all items that were
decidedly feminine while Mike received all masculine gifts. There were only
a few gifts remaining when Mike declared that it looked like there were no
wishes to be granted for him. He was secretly hoping that the pain in his
knee from the accident would miraculously go away and he'd be able to play
football again, but that just didn't seem to be in the cards for him.

"Well," Sam told him. You've still got a few left. Go ahead and open them
while I go to the bathroom."

In the bathroom Sam opened her robe and dropped her panties to her
knees. She lifted the toilet seat and was about to aim her penis toward the
bowl when she realized that her cock was completely gone, replaced with a
soft mound of flesh with a slight crease in it. Just inside the top/front
end of that crease was a small nub of flesh that tingled when she touched
it. Immediately behind/below that little nub was a small hole. She lowered
the seat, turned and sat before releasing a stream of urine through that
little hole, straight down into the toilet's water. Smiling at the welcome
change that had caused a minor inconvenience . . . one she was sure she'd
quickly accustom herself to . . . she used some toilet paper to wipe
herself dry, flushed and washed her hands.

Back in the living room, she was about to rejoin Mike on the couch when she
felt a strange and spontaneous urge. She came up behind him, put her arms
around him tenderly from behind, kissed his earlobe and whispered
sensuously, "Well sweetheart? Any wishes coming true yet?"

"No, nothing happening yet, but . . . HEY! What'd you call me? And why'd
you just do that?"

Realizing what she'd just done, Sam immediately straightened up and pulled
back. "I . . . I dunno! Something just sort of came over me and I couldn't
help myself!"

A big smile spread across Mike's face. "Maybe that's IT!" he announced.

"What? What's `it'?" Sam came around the end of the couch and sat next to
Mike, curling her long smooth legs up under herself.

"Maybe that's my secret unspoken wish! Maybe it's YOU!"

Sam looked at him with a puzzled look on her face. "What on earth are you
talking about?"

"All during my playing days," Mike explained, "I was able to get a date
with any girl I wanted to. All the hot chicks wanted to date the
up-and-coming star quarterback. But even before my accident I realized that
they weren't dating me for ME! They were dating me because it was a status
thing for them to be out with me. I longed for a girl who'd actually love
me for myself, and not for the honor of being seen with the star football
player. Maybe that girl is YOU!"

Sam cuddled in close, leaning her head against Mike's broad chest. "I think
I'd like that," she whispered, "As long as it wouldn't bother you to have a
girlfriend who was once a gay man, it would be an honor to be the girl
who'd love you for yourself. I never really cared much for football anyway,
so the football hero thing doesn't really impress me."

Mike turned a bit, looked down into Sam's blue eyes and saw a longing that
he'd never seen in another girl. He lowered his head toward her upturned
face and brought his lips down to meet hers. She moaned gently as they
kissed and whimpered with desire when his tongue pressed past her lips,
probing her mouth. She reached over and slid her hand between the folds of
his robe, finding his large swollen cock and massaging it gently through
his boxers. But when his hand slid up under her robe and approached her
panties she pulled back a bit, breathing hard.

"I don't think I've . . . my body hasn't quite finished changing yet. I
think we need to open the rest of the packages before we go any further."

Reluctantly, Mike pulled away from his new love and brought the rest of her
presents to her, along with bringing his own few remaining packages back to
the couch. Finally the only two presents remaining were the gifts they'd
gotten for each other. Sam watched as Mike began removing the wrapping from
the box that contained the book she'd bought him . . . an autographed copy
of "Favre", his hero Brett Favre's autobiography. It had taken her two
weeks to find the book and then two months to get it autographed by the
legendary quarterback himself, so she really hoped he liked it.

He opened the box and took out the book she'd purchased and then took out a
second book that had somehow gotten into the box along with "Favre". The
second book was entitled "101 Ways to Drive Your Woman Wild in Bed". She
knew that Santa had somehow added to her own gift, because that book had
certainly not been in the box when she'd wrapped it, and she told Mike
so. But that was the point in time when she realized that her body had just
about finished changing, because she now felt dampness in her panties from
the juices her new pussy was producing.

Mike looked on nervously as Sam opened the smaller box that should have
contained the wallet . . . a man's wallet . . . that he'd gotten for his
male housemate. Once Sam got the wrapping paper off and opened the box
there was a wallet inside all right, but it was obviously a woman's style,
beige with pink rhinestones decorating it. Sam opened up the wallet to find
a driver's license in the name of "Samantha Walker" instead of "Samuel
Walker" and with a picture on the license of what she looked like now,
instead of what she'd looked like only a few hours before.

She was about to thank Mike for whatever it was he'd originally gotten her
when she felt something else in the box go "clunk' as she went to put the
box on the coffee table. She looked, and in one corner of the larger box
was a small cube-shaped box that was covered in black felt. She opened the
small jewelry box to reveal a beautiful diamond engagement ring. They both
just stared at the ring for a few moments until Mike carefully took the
ring out of the box and slid it onto Sam's left ring finger.

Even before she started changing Samantha had been several inches shorter
than Mike, and she had gotten another two inches shorter as the change
progressed, so she had to stretch her neck as she pulled Mike's head down
towards hers to give him a tender kiss on the lips.

"I realize that the ring was probably Santa's doing and not yours," she
told him, "but you're the one who just put it on my finger, and that calls
for a special `thank-you'." She slipped her hand between the folds of his
robe and found the swollen bulge in his shorts. Pulling his boxers down and
out of the way a bit, she wrapped her small and slender fingers, now
magically perfectly manicured, shaped and polished, around the engorged
phallus and began gently stroking it.

Pushing his robe and shorts completely out of the way with her free hand,
Samantha leaned down and lovingly kissed the tip of Mike's cock, and then
licked away the bead of precum that had formed there before wrapping her
lips around the head, gently sucking and probing the little pee-hole with
her tongue. Still stroking him, she pulled back off and licked up and down
the shaft a few times before putting his meat back in her mouth and sliding
her lips all the way down to the base, so that the head was part way down
her throat. Bobbing her head up and down, she sucked gently on the large
cock until she sensed that he was close to cumming. She pulled back off of
him but kept her head in his lap as she looked up at him.

"My mouth is yours to cum in, if you want it sweetheart," she told him,
"but personally I'd prefer something else this time."

Mike smiled down at her. "Whatever you want, baby."

She straightened back up and swung her left leg over both of his so that
she was straddling his thighs. She opened her robe up completely and leaned
into him a bit so that her breasts, now large enough to be slightly
spilling over the lace edging of her bra, were pressed into his chest as
she kissed him. She lifted her hips a bit, reached down, pulled the gusset
of her panties to one side and gently guided the tip of his cock to the
swollen lips that guarded the way to the warm wet cavity that had so
recently developed in her body. She worked the head of his cock to just
beyond the lips so that her juices, which were now flowing freely and were
beginning to drip from her pussy, coated the head as she slowly lowered her
hips again, impaling herself on the long thick shaft of meat.

Although she'd been fucked by men before, during her previous life as a gay
man, and had always found being on the receiving end of anal sex to be very
pleasurable, those lovemaking sessions were nothing compared to the
sensations she was experiencing with Mike's cock buried inside her new
vagina and her own clit rubbing and banging against his pubic bone as she
moaned and writhed. Sweating and whimpering, she kissed her new lover and
ground her breasts against his chest, the silky bra cups tantalizing her
sensitive nipples and further enhancing her passion. It wasn't long before
she felt a new sensation welling up from somewhere deep inside her
body. She cried out in ecstasy as the first wave of her orgasm ran through
her body, her vaginal muscles squeezing Mike's cock inside her as if trying
to milk him of every drop of his seed.

As the third, and most powerful, wave rocked her body she felt Mike's big
love stick twitch once, then a second time, and then she was suddenly
flooded inside with his hot cum. She sunk her face into the side of his
neck as she basked in the afterglow of having just been well-fucked, and
then there was another new sensation. This time it wasn't a physical
sensation that she could actually put a description to . . . perhaps more
like a gut feeling from a piece of some sort of women's intuition. Whatever
it was, it seemed quite real. She somehow knew that her body was done
changing and that she was now a fully functional woman. What's more, she
sensed that one of her new ovaries had just released an egg, sending it on
its way down a fallopian tube toward her uterus, where thousands of Mike's
sperm were waiting to try to rendezvous with it.

Thrilled with the knowledge that in just a few hours she'd transformed from
a nondescript gay man into a beautiful woman, and that on top of that she
was only seconds away from becoming pregnant with Mike's baby, she clung
tightly to his neck, determined to keep on holding him and kissing him
until her vaginal muscles could no longer keep his rapidly softening cock
from falling out of her.

EPILOGUE:

Almost exactly ten years later, with Christmas only a few weeks away,
Samantha was thinking back on that wonderful Christmas morning a decade
before. She shifted in her rocker, made the necessary adjustment to the top
of her dress and nursing bra and moved the nursing infant from her right
breast to her left. Two-month-old Lisa was her fourth child, and probably
her last. Michael had done well with the consulting firm he'd started up
four years ago, and so they could easily afford a nanny, but having been
raised by surrogates herself she was loathe to have any sort of hired help
raise her children, and four was about all she felt capable of handling.

The twins, now almost six, were playing quietly in the corner of the large
playroom. Mikey was playing with his trucks while Michelle was busy
removing the clothing from all of her dolls. Only 9-year-old Nicholas,
named for a jolly old fat man that Samantha and Mike had encountered in the
mall the year of that unbelievably wonderful Christmas years ago, was
absent. Samantha looked at her watch, noting that Nick, as he preferred to
be called these days, was due home from school any minute.

She had nothing but fond memories of that long-ago Christmas. She and Mike
had made love three more times that day after breakfast. Mike insisted that
there was no way to know which of those four Christmas-day lovemaking
sessions, or perhaps even one of the many other times he'd fucked her in
subsequent days, resulted in her becoming pregnant with Nick, But Samantha
was adamant that she'd known right away. Nicholas was her last gift from
Santa that day. She heard the front door open and a minute later Nick came
into the room and walked over to kiss his mother hello.

"Hey Baby!" she greeted her eldest. "How was your last day of school before
Christmas vacation?"

"It was just fine Mom. But . . . can I ask you a question? And do you
promise to tell me the truth?"

"Of course, Nick! You can ask me anything, and I promise not to lie to you
when I answer."

Nick leaned in close to his mother so that the twins couldn't hear his
conversation with Samantha. "Some of the kids at school are saying that
there's no such thing as Santa Claus, but you told me before that I was
named for him. Is Santa real? My friends say it's actually the parents that
get their kids things for Christmas."

"Well Nick, I'll tell you the truth. When I was little I believed in Santa,
and then as I got older I stopped believing. But not long before Mommy and
Daddy got married we met the real Santa briefly, and he changed our lives
completely. I think it's very safe to say that you wouldn't be here today,
and Mommy and Daddy wouldn't even be married, if it weren't for him."

"It's true that it's mostly the parents that get their kids their Christmas
presents, but that doesn't mean that Santa's not real. It just means that
he's very busy, and needs lots of helpers, so he gets the parents to do
what they can. But the gifts that Santa brings himself . . . those are very
special gifts." She tousled the boy's wavy mop of hair. "And you're a very
special little boy, because you're one of those very special gifts. And
it's impossible for me or your Daddy to look at you without it remind us
that Santa most definitely IS real."