When we were all pretty young, we believed in Santa and in the absolute importance of actually sleeping on Christmas Eve "or he might pass you by," no matter how hard it might be to get to sleep. Another one of our family traditions, though, was that our parents would drive us through the neighborhood on Xmas Eve so we could ooh and aah at the lights. So one year my sister, about 5 at the time, was dead certain she'd seen Santa's sleigh flying around the area we were driving through--just a few minutes from home. (To this day I'm not sure what she saw--maybe the lights of a plane or just an exceptionally large lawn decoration.) And the rest of us kids believed her, too.
So we're all freaking out because CRUD MONKEYS!, Santa's just in the next neighborhood over, and we're all still awake! We start freaking that we need to go home and get to bed right away. When we do get home, our parents serve us huge cups of ice cream! It's great ice cream and we all love it, but the whole time we're panicking because what if Santa comes while we're still eating? He'll pass us by! I'm sure no kid has ever eaten ice cream so quickly or worriedly.
Mysteriously, Santa did not arrive until after our parents were done eating their own ice cream and putting us to bed.

ETA: Ayla, I remember that too. We picked out horrible presents for our parents with our few bucks. But it was so much fun to do it.