It's getting hard to remember what day it is... probably because today was just about like yesterday. Snow, snow, and more snow. I don't know how many hours the boys were outside, but when they finally did come in they were still warm under all their layers, and their cheeks were rosy all day!
When I was 3 and a half (or maybe 2 and a half?) my grandma taught me to say the whole "Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem. She was really into the whole Santa scene. Huge. Used to talk a relative or even a neighbor into dressing as Santa and showing up on Christmas Eve. With potentially 11 cousins involved, you might imagine that generated a bit of a frenzy. In fact, one year somebody flew over the lake near our house in a small plane with a red light on it.
Yeah. Christmas Eve, 11 kids, lots of cookies and candy, and a Rudolph-sighting.
Lots of adrenaline, my friends, lots of adrenaline.
Now, we don't "do" Santa, but neither do we make a big scene about being anti-Santa. We've told the boys about the historical St. Nicholas, and that Santa is a fun game people play at Christmas, and not to spoil other people's fun, because they are young enough to have friends that still believe. Tate thought it was fun to open our copy of "The Night Before Christmas". We like the illustrations in this version, by Bruce Whatley.
We moved on to a discussion about the difference between the Wise Men's and Herod's reaction to the birth of the King. And, interestingly, read Matthew 2 - one of the few places where an angel is recorded as saying something that doesn't begin with "Fear not". I guess either Joseph was getting used to being visited by angels (?) or the "Fear not" just didn't get recorded. Maybe it's just assumed the angel would start with that.
(Sort of like the old "How does a snow-boarder introduce himself? 'Oh, sorry dude, are you okay?' ")
2 comments:
We do the very same with "Santa."
I was telling my 7YO tonight about my friend who does the whole tooth fairy thing, complete with fairy dust (glitter) . . . and my son looked at me with a mix of both "total awe" AND "total disbelief." Like he was to shocked to imagine that there is such a thing as Mothers who play make-believe.
Snicker, snark.
Well, this may be entirely inconsistent, but I have perpetuated the fiction of the Tooth Fairy.
I figure that it isn't detracting from the true meaning of something like Christmas and Easter, so it's "okay" that way. But my kids are all wise to it :0)
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