BUSY IN BRISTOW: 'Tis the Season to Be Liars

Posted

The Harris Pavilion ice skating rink in Old Town Manassas is open, Oldest Daughter and I walked the parade route with the Girl Scouts a few days ago, and this Saturday, Nokesville lights its tree and has its parade. Most of us have assembled our plastic, pre-lit trees, and we Catholics are burning two out of three purple candles on the Advent Wreath. Since Thanksgiving was late this year, Hannukah commenced with the basting turkey, and millions of shoppers of all creeds cascaded into the malls for Black Friday specials.

What I want to examine in this column today is one question:  How is it that having kids actually took a season I used to look forward to all year and turned it into a four week microcosm of madness?

We created the monster ourselves, and his name is Santa Claus.

I remember that first Christmas when Oldest Son was newly home from Russia. His birthday IS Christmas day, so the presents piled up so high from floor to ceiling that we were balling up discarded paper and cardboard for two weeks after. We wanted him to feel the magic of an American Christmas: the one in which you fall asleep on Christmas Eve to a barren living room with limp stockings hanging on the hearth and wake up to a tree whose bottom branches are hitched up over brightly wrapped boxes. We even take before and after pictures of our tree as if it were one of those models on a Slim Fast commercial. BEFORE: No presents! Abject poverty! AFTER: Piles and piles of presents! Abundant wealth (albeit from Wal-Mart!)

We have lied many lies just to keep the first one going. So, in a season – that for us, spiritually – means we focus on forgiveness and cleansing our hearts to prepare for the coming of Christ – we have spent the majority of our time shopping online and trying to beat our now cognizant kids to the mailbox to intercept Santa’s presents (which, everyone knows, in the age of mail-order, he sometimes sends ahead so he doesn’t have to carry so much in his sleigh).

It isn’t that we didn’t TRY to get them interested in Advent; it’s just that even when you have a calendar whose windows reveal chocolate treats, nothing competes with the commercialism of Ho-Ho-Ho and 8 tiny reindeer.

Oldest Son – now complicit in the crime – got the, “I’m sorry, but your friends – not your family – have been telling you the truth for years – there is no Santa Claus” speech from me outside in the driveway two-years ago after catching us in one of our carelessly crafted stories. He made it to the 4th grade before he got the Christmas version of the birds and bees talk, my explanation of which went something like this:

There WAS a guy named Saint Nicholas, and he gave presents to the village children just like the boring bearded wise guys gave Jesus presents back in the day. Somehow, somewhere – probably Macy’s and the Miracle on 34th Street – someone decided hey! Let’s make up a new version of St. Nick and put him in a sleigh and have him deliver presents -- many of which their parents can’t afford -- through 24-time zones all in the space of one night. We’ll feed his reindeer carrots and leave cookies out for him, and since the only way he can get into most houses – remember this was back when houses had fireplaces, not heat pumps – without breaking and entering is through the chimney, he’ll do it that way. So, even though there isn’t ONE FAT GUY in red who flies through the night in a sleigh, there IS the magic of Christmas that each of us feels when we GIVE gifts rather than RECEIVE them, and now that you’re old enough to understand we’ve had a ball lying to you, you get to be a part of that lie.

Oh, and if you DARE spill the beans to your brother and sisters, you’ll pay, buddy. I mean, won’t it be fun – instead – to be Santa’s helper and create the illusion for them … for a few more years anyway?

Oldest Son cried. He wept so hard that his entire 9-year-old body shook, but then something registered in his mind, (I could see it click) and he took one more tiny step toward adulthood. His eyes no longer light up like they once did at Christmas, and I know he has lost some part of his innocence that has since been replaced by half-censored Eminem lyrics and half-truths about his body, a temple that has begun to morph into a miasma of puberty filled mystery.

I remember when he was three, and he danced on his tippy toes in sheer joy at the sight of so many presents. I can see his beaming smile so clearly in my mind, the way his eyes twinkled kind of like St. Nick’s. And now he walks with the gait of knowledge, hurrying down the hill to the mailbox before the other kids can get there to ferry the packages into our house’s well known hiding spots. I know that as he holds the boxes he is wondering if perhaps one is for him, and I’m guessing he misses being on the other side of that chasm of youth: the one created not of spiritual truths you know deep in your heart but the one of man-made fabrications that make reality a little sweeter than it really is.

Like many moms, Kathy drives a mini-van full of booster seats and Disney/Pixar DVD’s. When she’s not chauffeuring her kids, ages 11 and under, to activities, she teaches for Prince William County Public Schools, writes fiction, poetry and this column about the challenges and rewards of being a mom to young children.

advent, bristow, christmas, holidays-2, kids, mom-blog, santa-claus, telling-kids-about-santa, true-meaning-of-christmas, virginia