Christmas Flops and High Hopes

I have just spent about 3 days and countless hours pouring my creative heart and soul into a Christmas project that is not to be. Well, not by Christmas anyway. I will write more about it, but it was for my mother and father-in-law and it just isn't working out. They are VERY difficult to buy for, so I tried to come up with something homemade and technology has failed me - AGAIN - this month. The problem is I have no plan B for them. I have nothing else. I have not abandoned hope, but I have abandoned deadlines in the interest of ACTUALLY enjoying the next couple of days with my hubby and kids. Speaking of...

We do Santa. We know a lot of Christians that don't, and don't get me wrong, I totally understand why. It can completely cloud the vision of the TRUE meaning of Christmas if you are not careful. However, this Santa thing ROCKS!!!! Holy cow, the power of the naughty and nice list cannot be understood to non-Santa parents. I have gained more mileage over the last week with this than a hybrid Toyota. Also, the genuine, non-questioning, 100% belief in something SO illogical is truly something to cherish. I have been the one asking kids the hard questions to get them thinking and to hear their responses. Their answer is almost always, "because he's Santa." I love it. Gavin was terrified as soon as dusk was upon us this evening around 5:00 that he would fall out of favor with the jolly man in red, and Santa would bypass the house with the non-sleeping children. I had to get on NORAD.com and show Gavin the globe so he could see where Santa was and his projected path. The sheer impossibility of the entire concept hit me as I was doing this, and I realized Santa had 4 hours to cover the entire western 1/3 of South America, all of densely populated Latin America and the entire Eastern Time zone in the 5 or so hours until midnight. (According to NORAD, he was in Brazil at about 7:00) I LOVED Gavin more for just knowing it to be true and skipping off. We went outside in the dark in our slippers to look for red nosed reindeer and to listen for jingle bells as we do every Christmas Eve. We didn't find anything except the local airport's red blinking control tower light. My dental hygienist asked me the other day if I was looking forward to Santa's arrival. I said I haven't looked forward to Santa's arrival since I became Santa. Not true as I think about it. I LOVE being Santa, because I won't get to be him for much longer.

As we put the kids to be tonight and the excitement of Santa danced off every breath they took, I asked them why we celebrate Christmas. The VERY FIRST words out of each of their mouths was "Jesus!" Why do we give gifts? "Jesus' birthday." I think we can keep Santa around as long as we keep Jesus first.

KEEP BELIEVING