Five GOLDEN Rings Ba Da Bum Bum

Ok, it looks like I haven’t run out of steam yet.

I have a confession to make. My boys do not believe in Santa Clause. I know, it sounds bad. I grew up with the myth of Santa, Kathleen did not. When Kathleen’s sister Stephanie had a daughter she made the decision that she was not going to do Santa with Elisa. So, Steph told Elisa the truth when she was pretty young. She explained that there was no Santa and that all the gifts come from family and friends. Elisa’s granny (Clyde’s Mom) told Elisa otherwise and then showered her in gifts from Santa as proof. I can remember a 4 year old Elisa telling me I was all wrong about Santa, because her granny knew him.

So, when Kat and I had Paul, we agreed that we could forgo the Santa tradition, (since Kat already compromises on the tree). I had no idea what a challenge it would be. Of course marketing and advertising are against us, but that is almost beside the point because the boys know what they see on TV is not real. The problem is that when my boys tell people that they do not believe, they are always corrected and usually by adults. When Paul was little it was somewhat amusing when people asked him what Santa was bringing him, because he always answered ‘nothing’ and smiled. When he was 4 they had someone come to his day care dressed as Santa and it was reported to me that Paul did not want to sit on his lap and talk to him, that they had to bribe him with chocolate AND a candy cane, that they had to give the treats to him BEFORE he would sit on Santa’s lap and that then he would not tell Santa what he wanted. They asked him if Santa could bring a present for his brother and he LOUDLY let them know that he, PAUL, was getting a present for his brother, and no one else was ALLOWED to.

But all of that is secondary to what my Matthew has gone through. Please understand, we tell the boys every year that it is ok for other kids to talk about Santa and to believe in Santa, and that it is absolutely not their job to tell everyone. In fact, I encourage them to keep their mouths shut about the whole thing. Matthew, however, has a very strong sense of truth and not truth. And in his world, not truth is a LIE, and there are big consequences for telling A LIE. So he cannot help but share what he knows about Santa, and it always gets him in trouble.

Before he started kindergarten an extended session worker in the church nursery told me that Matthew was telling all the other little children there was no Santa and that he was ruining Christmas for them, and that if I did not put a stop to it he could not come back to the nursery. I gave her my blank stare and said, “thank goodness we believe that Christmas is about Jesus then.”

Only in my head it was more like “listen you hateful hag, you are not in charge here, and you are not the parent of my kid, I know people that will shank you, you crazy witch.” Only I didn’t think witch, which led to another internal dialog about how she made me cuss in my head in church and how that was not very Christ-like of her, and that I hoped God would get her for that. And I think I showed remarkable restraint for that.

So the moral of this story is my kids do not believe in Santa and don’t make me shank you.