Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Christmas

We celebrate Christmas even though we're atheists. It's a cultural thing for us as we celebrated Christmas as kids ourselves. Believe it or not, you can celebrate it in as secular a way as possible. I got rid of my nativity scenes years ago. The story of baby Jesus is similar to the story of Santa - it's just a Christmas story.

I love Christmas music, the tree with lights, looking at the outdoor lights of our neighbors. I really love it.

We had a great Christmas this year. We went over to my folks house on Christmas Eve and had lunch. It was really great. M loved helping Grandma cook and everyone behaved themselves. Drinking was only done at the dinner table and it was in moderate amounts.

Christmas morning was fun. We woke up, saw the puppet show theater that she got from Santa, then headed over to our local Waffle House. It's become our Christmas morning tradition to do that. It's fun because the ladies at the WH know us from over the years. We also bring them homemade cookies and fudge. They're always very complimentary when I bring them in. It definitely is something that makes me feel good to do.

We then headed home and opened presents. M had so many presents that she got tired of opening them.

Side story: our neighbors have kids M's age and they have a pretty small Christmas. Santa brought one big present - an deluxo-electric piano. I actually like this and we'll probably try to do that next year. M gets stuff all the time during the year (uh, yeah - I spoil her) and we now have to go on a toy purge to make room for all her new stuff.

The day after Christmas we went to visit our good friends, the C's. We have a standing Friday night family night with these folks and I just love getting together with them. The girls love each other and we're very compatible from a couple standpoint. Same age, been married for a while, had kids late, nerdy.

As we were going home from the C's, M pipes up in the back, "You know who hates Santa?"

I thought she was going to say one of her school buddies. . .

"No honey, who?" we replied.

"ME!" she answered.

Well, I was a little crushed. I knew that feeling so well. I had a little trouble with the whole Santa thing and remember as a kid having trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve thinking that this strange man would be coming into MY house. Granted, he was coming in to leave toys, but he was coming in using magic. How does he come in? We didn't have a fireplace. The questions kept on running through my head.

Well, M is having a similar experience. Last year she didn't want to come out of her room on Christmas morning because she thought Santa was waiting for her in the living room. As soon as she understood that Santa came and went, she was fine with coming out to see what goodies she got (or more importantly, what did Santa remember to bring her from her list).

This year she did NOT want to sit on Santa's lap AT ALL. We tried to see if she'd sit on his lap, but we never forced her or made her feel bad for not wanting to sit on his lap. We recently switched to Vonage for our phone service and they had a deal where you could dial *101 (I think) and listen to a message from Santa. She wasn't really keen on talking to Santa on the phone either, so I pretended to talk to Santa and gave him her list of things that she wanted this year (Barbies, a scooter, a Leapster, a baby doll, and a skate board. . . and that's all). She remembered from last year that Santa didn't give her a skate board, so that's why she put it on her list this year. Reminder: She was TWO last year.

So, since she finally said that she hated Santa, we decided that it was time to tell her that Santa was Mom and Dad.

She was relieved and I can see the happiness in her eyes when she holds up a "Santa" gift and ask who bought her this toy or that toy. Life makes sense again.

1 comment:

Smerdyakov said...

I'm scared of Santa as well. I think it's because when I was a kid, Santa murdered my dad.