I remember Christmas

Well here we are at Christmas Eve, 2008; and to borrow from Dickens, the Christmas Present is kind of a shambles. Some good ideas are still just ideas, and I wish I had a maid and Martha Stewart’s staff in my employ. Yeah, I know, if I were as smart as Martha Stewart, I would have my own staff. But I don’t, and there is way too much Christmas to go around.

Actually I could be content just to remember Christmases Past when my family wasn’t all grown up and there were small children in my home to make a Christmas for.

After all, it’s the children who are mostly nice and the grown-ups who are naughty, but you can’t threaten big people using the Santa-won’t-come routine. In the Christmas Past, Santa was not only a good motivational tool, but he was a good scapegoat, as well. There was always someone to blame when Christmas was less than perfect.

Well, we had a few of those, but there was still plenty of goodwill to make everyone merry. Kids are pretty forgiving that way. Some years though, I was ready to shoot Santa myself.

His choice of toys was what I had to quarrel with. Maybe since he didn’t have to live with his toys for the rest of the year he was a little short-sighted, but his selection was incredibly awful sometimes. I don’t think he ever left anything that didn’t require batteries, make a lot of noise, or fit the neighbors better than us.

He has left trucks so big you had to park them in the garage, and cars so small that they got lost under the bath mat. He has brought guns that mimicked submachine and never ran out of ammunition. He has left building sets with more parts than my Ford, and all of them just that necessary.

He has dropped off games with instructions in French, sweatshirts that would fit himself and no one else, and bicycles that take eight hours to put together.

Of course there comes a time when each kid gets older and you realize its time for either the kid or yourselves to grow up and take responsibility for Santa and his ideas. And just once in a while, when you/he got it right, you might even like to take little of the credit for yourself.

My grand-nephew’s parents thought it was time to sit him down and explain to him that Santa might be a bit of a stretch for even a ten-year-old’s imagination. So the other day they tried to let Santa out of the closet without too much trauma. When they told him who really leaves the presents, the kid was unconvinced. He said, “I don’t believe that, because there is no way that you guys could afford what Santa brought me last year.”

So hold off on the expensive presents until you can get credit for them. Let Santa bring the games with French instructions.

But let you be the one who gives love and laughter—cookies made while little helpers stand on chairs, forays to find the perfect tree which will soon have its symmetry destroyed with overloaded bottom branches, the Christmas story read from St. Luke in children’s halting voices, Jingle Bells sung off-key all the way to Grandma’s house.

Christmas is about the toddler standing in front of the lighted tree murmuring “Christmas, Christmas.” It began with a Child who was born in a stable. May it live on for children everywhere. And may our celebrations reflect the wonder of it all.