My Semi-European Childhood, Part II

When I was young, I lived for a time in half of a double house in a small village near Oxford, England.  

My dad was an intelligence officer in the US Air Force.  We were used to him disappearing without explanation for days at a time, and then returning with oh, say, a cuckoo clock.  Code for Germany.  Belgian chocolates—you get the picture.

One Christmas Eve, Dad came home from work—or from having beers at the Officer's Club—and told us that on the radar at the base there'd been a UFO spotted.  


The really weird thing is, that was not an unusual occurrence.  But that night, the air traffic controllers said it looked suspiciously like a sleigh and reindeer.  Dad went into specific detail about the route of the man in red, and his ETA  for our town. 

I'll always wonder if every soldier from Upper Heyford Air Force Base went home that night and told his children the same tale, or if it was just my father who shared that story with three children who didn't see their dad nearly enough.