Christmas is an event to be enjoyed by all people, big and small. It is more than a day; Christmas is a season, a way of thinking, a perception of life.

Christmas is not about presents, as learned from the cheerful townsfolk in that story about an unsuccessful robbery attempt by some hairy green fellow.

I have discovered through experience that Christmas, as most Americans experience it, is for kids. The time of good tidings and great joy for all people is truly enjoyed by the smallest of these.

They have the capacity to appreciate it. They just feel it.

I am the oldest of five grandchildren in my family.

As Christmas has come and Christmas has gone through my twenty years, the focus has become less a matter of presents and more a matter of family, as it should be. But my family is not good at making Christmas magic for young men and ladies; only for children.

As one grows older the sparkles dim and the glitter fades from the enchantment of it all. One day there is no jolly old man in a bright red suit. One day there is no dream of snow. One day there is not even a tree. The year my Christmas faded was the year my grandparents replaced their wood stove with a gas heater.

Now, as a minister's daughter I can tell you better than anyone that Christmas is really all about Jesus being born.

But Jesus really loved kids, remember? It makes sense for the season to be child-oriented.

My aunt and uncle have taken two foster children into their care, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. Christmas was for them.

My grandma wanted a live tree, for "the little ones." My grandpa cut one down in the freezing rain early "Christmas" morning, Dec. 23. I was in charge of decorating the disheveled and misshapen little pine.

I decked that sucker in anything it would hold, which wasn't much in the way of ornamentation. Silver garland wrapped around the branchless-bottom three feet of the tree and struggled to lift and support three great naked branches jutting from the base. Around the top three feet of the tree, I wrapped two strings of poinsettia-shaped red lights. There were no ornaments on the tree because the long needles and spindly limbs could not hold the weight.

It was atrocious.

The little ones loved it.

They did not care that some of the garland was old and brittle and crumbled when you touched it. They were not concerned with the facts that the tinsel was sparse and stringy, or the tree stand was missing so my grandpa used a vise.

When the tree was lit in its crimson splendor they stood awestruck, as if we'd placed before them the very Star of Bethlehem.

Their reverence was as short-lived as their young little attention spans, and of course they wanted to touch it. Being the oldest of them all, I took it upon myself to inform the little ones that if they took one more piece of tinsel off of that tree, then Santa would eat all of their presents.

They believed me, because for the little ones Christmas is still magical.

Sharon Moore is a junior journalism major from Natchitoches and serves as a news editor for The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to sem010@latech.edu.