December 24, 2024 
There is no one on earth with more optimism than a horse girl on Christmas morning. I happen to know this firsthand.
For many years in my early life, I knew that Santa was bringing me a horse for Christmas. “Knew” in the same way that Mean Girls’ Karen Smith’s ‘body parts’ knew it was going to rain, or that Columbus knew he had finally reached India.
In short, it was not so much a knowing as a deep feeling of profound rightness.
Coming from a very middle-class family, in a very suburban neighborhood, with zero horse know-how among us, you might characterize my knowing as a kind of delusion. Especially given the fact that the rest of the year, my parents were forced to scrimp and save for every lesson. Eventually, those lessons would turn into a partial-lease lease on a bargain-basement young pony that did more naughty things in one half hour than most ponies could think of in a lifetime (rearing, bucking, laying down, biting your foot—you get the idea).
In other words, I had no business thinking that the $150K hack-winner was waiting downstairs.
But to me, now as then, my conviction was a testament to my iron-clad belief in the magic of Christmas. That somehow, on this very special day of the year, I would leap from my bed at 6 a.m., drumming on the door of my mildly hungover and very sleep-deprived parents (I know things now, I have kids of my own) and begging for everyone to “GET OUT OF BED” and “GET DOWNSTAIRS!”
My horse was waiting. She was just there, below. Would my mare be grey with a dished face and a blanket of dapples across her rump? Or could it be the new, green gelding I’d been eyeing for months, with the four white socks, daisy-cutter trot, and a penchant for peppermints?
I wasn’t troubled by the logistics of it. Far from it.
When I was truly small, I assumed that Santa would simply tie my horse up in the backyard, a Christmas wreath around her neck, as they always did for the kids in storybooks. As I got older, though, I realized this could be challenging, especially if it was snowing, and given my dad’s obsession with his garden. A horse might inadvertently trample the overwintering peonies, a detail Santa would certainly know.
In that case, a letter from ol’ Saint Nick laying out the details of my bill of sale was much more practical. This would be followed, in short succession, by a quick trip to the barn, when all of us would bundle up and bundle into my parents’ station wagon. There, my new horse would be waiting for me; clipped and groomed and shining, his head slung over the corner stall.
Would I cry? Probably. I knew I would definitely give that Academy Awards-style speech I’d been rehearsing for years in my head, thanking my parents for their support, my trainer for believing in me, and my little brother, Nate, for sitting through hours of lessons in a frozen barn.
And so, each Christmas, with the confidence of a 58-year-old Mike Tyson strolling into the ring for his last heavy weight bout, I’d await the green-light from my parents. Then, I’d fling myself down the stairs, certain that the first, real chapter of my equestrian destiny was waiting just below.
During those years, as my brother fiddled with nature books and building sets, I’d search for my own Golden Ticket: my hands dashing like rabbits to the bottom of my empty stocking, then burrowing through a detritus of ribbon and wrapping paper, and eventually, dashed hopes.
There would be no envelope from Santa that year, nor in the years to come. A horse for Christmas was something that only happened in The Saddle Club or cheesy Hallmark movies. It wasn’t happening for me.
Each year, my parents did their best to manage my expectations, walking that impossible tightrope between “at Christmas, anything is possible” and, “a horse just isn’t probable.”
In the same way, I fought valiantly to conceal my disappointment from them, somehow knowing that it mattered. I’d tell myself to be more grateful, to act more appreciative of everything I’d already been given. And then, in the same breath, I’d vow to never give up hope. Because next year might be different.
When I did finally get a pony of my own, it was the summer I turned 15—by then, an increasingly clear-eyed realist. The timing of it might actually have lined up to be the perfect, surprise birthday present, but my mom was adamant that horses and ponies should not be given as gifts, birthdays or otherwise.
Horses were animals, and they counted on you. A horse required hard work, steadfastness, and money (so much money) to comfortably maintain. To enter into that unspoken, horse-human contract with anything less than a realistic understanding of the hard work that would be expected of you to hold up your end of the bargain was foolishness.
And, in the end, she was right.
The horse “bug” has never left me, all these years later. And with sometimes two horses depending on me at any given period, the totality of my Christmas list for the last few decades has including things like new stirrup leathers, heavy-weight blankets, and cash toward my outstanding horse bills. (This year, I briefly considered asking my vet if she offered gift certificates—gold mine!)
It’s too soon to tell if either of my children could have inherited the horse bug. My two-year-old daughter seems like the best candidate at present. And if, someday, as she’s spot-cleaning her paddock boots for the hundredth time while waiting for next week’s lesson, and she looks up at me with hope-filled eyes, and tells me that this year, the only thing she really wants for Christmas is a horse of her own, I’ll play my part as duty requires.
I’ll tell her that I don’t think that Santa gives horses as presents; that they’re too much responsibility, too serious an undertaking and, failing that, that they definitely don’t fit down the chimney.
She won’t believe a single word.
That’s okay. She’ll have the other 364 days a year, for many years, to plan out how she’ll pay the bills, fill out the lesson and boarding contracts, and negotiate getting-to-the-barn logistics with her parents. Christmas, after all, is a time for suspending disbelief.
Because on this magical night, anyone could wake up a horse owner in the morning. Or, as the story goes, anyone who truly believes.
