The Other Side of Midnight Puns

When my brother and I were little, we put out milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeers on Christmas eve, and woke up on Christmas morning to find them mostly eaten. We were delighted at proof of our nighttime visitors.

The next year our dad told us he had gotten an inside tip from the north pole: that Santa actually liked ramen and beer, not milk and cookies (as other, less well informed, dads and kids had always thought).

For years, we dutifully cooked ramen, put it on a table by the fireplace with a cold beer on the side, and woke up to the ramen and beer having been consumed in the night.

I knew my dad wasn't fond of milk or cookies, but it wasn't until later that we connected the dots and found out the deal about Santa. My dad was the one who ate the Santa food once we went to bed, and he had secretly convinced us to prepare his ideal midnight snack for as long as we believed in Santa.