Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

Oh, yeah.. "The lustre of midday" bit is totally realistic. I've seen winter nights like that. What made me think it might have been dream imagery, in this case, was how Saint Nick's beard was also described as white as snow (new-fallen snow), when every other bit of his attire was covered in ashes and soot. It was the incongruity of that, that raised the (second) flag that this was likely a dream...

When I was in seventh grade (13 years old in the American school grade system), my science teacher was also my English teacher, and the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" had come out in the middle of that semester. So reports of alien spacecraft sightings were all over popular culture. And one of our class assignments was to evaluate different reports of sightings and judge them on their credibility (yeah, he was an awesome teacher). And then, we had to go home, write our own 'encounters,' and the next day the class would evaluate each story on whether they thought it had really happened, it was just a dream that a well-meaning person had thought had really happened, or someone was just trying to sell their story to The National Enquirer.

Here's how I would retell "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" to make it a credible report of waking world reality:

1. Both adults wake up at the "Clatter" (or "Mama") wakes up when he opens the window, says something, and/or comes to the window to look out with him.
   
2. There is more time between hearing the hooves on the roof, and actually encountering the "elf" -- such as sprinting down the hallway, and running down the stair -- doing more than simply pulling in your head and turning around -- even if Santa did just drop down the chimney, it would have taken him longer to get down (like climbing out of the sleigh, and hoisting himself up onto the chimney ledge).... It's easy to skip past the logistics of things, in dreaming. Not so much for the waking world.
   
3. Saint Nick's beard would have been sooty, too, as noted above.
   
4. I'd make note of the sooty boot prints left behind on the hearth, after he'd gone.

Now, as I've written, before, I'm a confirmed believer in The Furry Claus.

But, while all the little details taken separately wouldn't discredit this as a bona fide encounter, taken together, they point me in the direction of concluding this must be a dream.