Best Christmas Eve story you’ve experienced? ?

It was Christmas 1997. After years of my mother not letting me see her family because she was using me as a pawn to get her father back for being an alcoholic this estrangement was suddenly no more. My Mom had died in September of 1997 in an accident with my two siblings. All 3 were killed. All of a sudden I was an only child with only 1 parent. 

That Christmas I wanted to still feel the Christmas Spirit. Thankfully my Dad understood this despite his grieving and we got in the Christmas Spirit. In August of that year my Dad had allowed me to meet my maternal grandfather. He was really nice to me and my Dad said to feel free to start a relationship with him and that he would go with me to see him if I would feel more comfortable that way. I said "for now yeah why don't you join" and I got to know him. He was a good guy and not what my Mom had portrayed him as. 

So come Christmas 1997 I got to see ALL FOUR of my grandparents. This was an amazing feeling. We spent Christmas Eve with my late mother's family and then saw her parents Christmas Day for about 30 minutes at my grandmother's floral shop. Then we had dinner as we did each year with my Dad's family where I bragged I had FOUR grandparents. 

Christmas 1997 was my best Christmas ever. 2005, 2007, and 2020 were also wonderful years. Also 1999. 

Since I spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with family I can’t share too much. But a year when we went to my great grandparents house it was probably my best Christmas. We are spending it with them again this year now that they moved down here 

I once left out cookies, carrots, and milk for santa and his reindeer, and when I woke, they were all gone, they had eaten every bite! That night, I looked into the sky and saw a shooting star, except I don't think it was a shooting star... I think it was Santa in his sleigh, thanking me.

My mom said that when she was a little girl, her grandmother would open the front door at midnight on Christmas Eve to "let the Christ child in."  I've always remembered that.  That was in the 1920s.  I don't imagine too many kids are allowed to stay up till midnight on Christmas Eve these days.  And it was  a cold part of the country that they lived in so Brrrrrr!  They didn't decorate the Christmas tree until Christmas Eve.