The dreaded Santa question

"Is Santa ---" my seven year-old Seconda started to ask. I knew what was coming.

She would ask me if Santa was real. When Primo was her age exactly, he asked me this, and I was unprepared. I stalled for a few months by asking him if HE thought Santa was real and then when that no longer held him off, I asked if he REALLY wanted to know the answer, which I thought was pretty much an answer in and of itself. And then when he insisted yes, yes, he was ready to hear it, he was strong enough, I told him the truth.

This time, though, with my second-born, I was ready. Except she didn't ask the question I thought she would.

"Is Santa dead?" she asked instead.

Buy time, my mind strategized.

"Who told you that?"

"Marion." she replied, "and Harry and Chloe and a bunch of other aids."

"So what you're saying is there's a rumor going around school that Santa Claus is dead?" I asked.

I have gotten proficient at the stalling-by-asking-questions strategy.

"Yes," she said, "Is is true?"

The problem with my ingenious stalling tactic, though, is sometimes the extra time does not buy me better ideas. I'm right where I starred.

"No it's not true," I said, and then I tossed in a really forced over-loud peal of laugher which is my specialty. "Of course not."

"But a lot of the kids said it was true," she said dubiously.

"Well let me ask you this," I pressed on, "What do they say is the cause of death?"

I was thinking she'd say he got hit by a car or developed cancer or slipped and fell off a roof one night or got trampled by an unruly reindeer or maybe he drank himself to death or took one too many painkillers or maybe he was murdered. None of those responses would have surprised me. These are city kids, after all.

"He died of old age," Seconda replied.

Then I laughed for real.

"Seconda, that's ridiculous," I replied, knowing full well that the whole Santa mythology was ridiculous, that the entire tale was a kind of insanity, an insanity which I was, now, fully committed to perpetuating.

"I mean, Santa is already thousand of years old." I went on, "so why on earth would he die of old age this year? It's like he was fine on his 1,564th birthday but the 1,565th one just put him over the edge? That is really silly."

She looked at me skeptically. I felt a bit uneasy. Primo did not take the truth about Santa well. He is STILL pissed at me for "lying" to him. Whenever I tell him something that he doesn't quite believe, and he questions the veracity of my statement, I say "Have I ever lied to you?" --  idiotically thinking he will agree that the answer is no.

"Yes," he invariably replies, "You lied to me about Santa. For years. So you're a liar."

"I just wanted to give you THE MAGIC of Christmas that I loved when I was a kid!!" I retort. "It's a STORY."

"It's a lie," he says. Case closed.

I don't know if Seconda will hold the Santa story against me like her big brother does. But there is no turning back now. Confirming Santa is dead won't rectify the first "lie", it'd only add another one to the pile.

So, no, I refuse to kill off Santa. Call me old-fashioned.

Shitty Christmas Gifts For Your Kids

I just died laughing at this blog post by Drew at Deadspin.com on  Shitty Christmas Presents For Your Kids. Died.

My highlights? His description of giving clothes as gifts (someone should clue my mother in because every year she gives clothes to the kids and every year they almost vomit in thier mouth and I have to yell at them for being ingrates and the whole thing is a big pain in my ass) :

"Clothes aren't a gift. Children know full well that you bought them that shirt for your own sake, so that you could treat little Kayleighanna as your own personal American Girl doll. They aren't falling for that."

His riff on the outrageous cost of American Girl dolls (which we, by some act of grace have thus managed to avoid mainly because I tell Sec "Uh huh, don't even think of asking for one - they're too expensive):

"Is she an ACTUAL girl? Can she grow up to help with dishes and whatnot?"

His definition of Duplos:

"giant Legos made for stupid children"

And his tirade at parents that give their kids his own (or, as he puts it "its own") Ipad:

"Screw you. Your child is an entitled little shit and I hope he trips and falls in the mud and his little iPad gets ruined and he cries all the way home in the back of your BMW SUV because you clearly own a BMW SUV."

I think Drew is my ideal match blogger husband. If we raised kids together, our offspring would curse like sailors and have VERY good taste in everything.

Education Before Chocolate

We're big fans of chocolate advents calendars in my house and this year, since I'm so on top of my Christmas game, I bought the kids theirs even before the first of December. They've been enjoying their chocolates in the morning on the way to school and this year, we haven't yet had the prob lem where Sec tears open all the windows one day in a frenzy of choco-desire and then cries the rest of the month because there's no candy left. Its been smooth sailing.

The other morning, Primo asked for his calendar (part of the reason we've avoided Sec's choco-frenzy is that I smartened up this year and keep them stashed out of reach, to help her fight temptation).

"Ok, " I said, "Just have Daddy show you how to tie your shoes and once you tie them, you can have your chocolate."

I was surprised to find that Primo was shocked and chagrined by this.

"Why are you making me have EDUCATION before I eat my CHOCOLATE?" he yelled.

I had to laugh. What else can you do?

Now that I see how anathema education is, particularly when it precedes sugar-consumption, I think perhaps that I won't point out to Sec that while she's looking for the right chocolate window to open, she's actually learning her numbers Don't want to upset her.

I've already celebrated Christmas, and its not even December 1st

David, the kids and I just concluded a jam-packed, whirlwind weekend of city Christmas events. Consequently, we will not be doing ANYTHING remotely Yuletide-ish for the next four weeks until Christmas Day actually hits. I've already done Christmas, basically. Done and done. Lest you think I'm premature, I'd like to point out that I waited until after Thanksgiving at least, which is more than I can say for the stores which have been playing Christmas music since HALLOWEEN.

The Christmas extravaganza began the day after Thanksgiving when the kids went to see the Rockettes with my sister. This is not part of our normal repertoire, mainly because it costs so much damn money. But this year, I found a half-price Groupon and my mother, who can't resist a great deal, agreed to foot the bill. The only catch was you had to see the show before the end of November. No problem for us, I thought -- it just kicks off the holiday season.

After Radio City, we walked down Fifth Avenue, checked ut the windows and stumbled right past the Plaza. Now, who can walk past the Plaza without taking a stroll inside? Five dozen pictures of the kids in front of the Plaza Christmas trees followed. These would have been perfect for my Christmas card this year had I not ALREADY MADE THE CHRISTMAS CARDS. Yes, people, I did my annual Christmas-card-photo-shoot two weeks ago, on a resplendent 60 degree Sunday morning, when the kids could go outside with no coats and when I could order the cards for half price off, courtesy of yet another Groupon. (Are you seeing a trend here? My life is dictated by daily deals). The Plaza was cool, though man, is that shit commercial now. Shops and shops as far as the eye can see. Its basically the Plaza Mall, but hey, I'm not complaining. they have delightful restrooms which are free to the public.

The next day, we took on the main event of the Christmas Season: Santaland. I probably have a half-dozen entries about Santaland, and if you check them out, you may glean valuable information about how to avoid the crowds and get in and out of Macy's with your sanity intact. But this year we OUTDID ourselves, sailing through Santaland in FIFTEEN MINUTES. We took my grandmother, who hasn't been to see Santa in literally three decades, and I told her to brace herself for some standing around on line. But when we arrived on the eighth floor, the entrance to Santaland was eerily abandoned. We walked right on to the train. In fact, David had dropped us off at the entrance to Macys and gone off on on his own to find parking, since there's always at least a 30 minute wait before you even enter the train. But though he found a parking spot immediately and raced up the escalators to meet us, we had already reached the front of the line and were waiting for him at the entrance to the private Santa chamber when he arrived. It was almost TOO fast -- we didn't even have time to marvel at the train display or the mechanized ballet bears.

A quick trip to my parents' place in New Jersey secured us our Christmas tree and decorations and once we had those in our possession, it seemed silly not to just put them up. Christmas music was played, and tree was trimmed, on Sunday afternoon.

So yeah, we're done with Christmas. Santa can take it from here.

Christmas-cookie-making mania

Here’s a part of Christmas-celebrating that seems odd to me: the compulsion people have to make cookies. I’m talking about normal people, non-baker-types, who for the other 11 months of the year feel no yen at all to fire up the ovens and get all nitty gritty with the flour and the sugar. I know a whole host of people like this, who when December rolls around, suddenly catch cookie fever and take on these extraordinarily complex baking projects which lead to cookie boxes that look store-bought – ribbons, bows, cellophane wrapping, the whole nine yards.

My mother was always one such person. There were at least five different kinds of cookies in her repertoire – all of them traditional Italian cookies – the powered nut balls, the frappe’s which look like bows, biscotti, among them. Her and my grandmother would spend hours tying the bow dough perfectly, fighting the whole time

“You’re not doing it right! Look at that one! We have to re-do it!”

“Whatta you talking about? Fifty years I make the frappes!”

“Then you’ve been making them wrong ALL THIS TIME!”

We kids did not help in the endeavor, because if my grandmother’s seasoned fingers were not nimble enough, then ours certainly weren’t. It was much like that scene from The Hours where Julianne Moore tosses out the birthday cake her son helped her make and makes a new, perfect one by herself. Except without the first cake altogether.

I, too, feel compelled to bake Christmas cookies, but I’ve stumbled onto the formula which works for me and for the kids, and it is this:

1. We bake one batch of sugar cookies

2. We separate each stage – 1.mixing, 2.rolling, cutting and baking, 3.decorating – by several days

These two decisions helped me to avoid several awful side effects of Christmas cookie baking:

I no longer get that overwhelmed, why-the-hell-did-I-start-this-goddamned-project, I-am-a-trapped-hausfrau feeling that comes when I do anything domestic for over one and a half hours.

Since each stage only last 30 minutes or so, the kids can help the whole time

AND most crucial of all, by letting the kids help decorate, I am able to tell everyone I give the cookies to, “The kids made them” which covers up my lack of skill, because the truth is, they’d look precisely the same, if I made them all by myself. I can’t coat a Douglass Fir sugar cookie with red icing to save my damn life (cookies in the picture above are not, obviously, mine. I was too depleted after making them to take a picture, as usual).

I put four or five awful-looking but delicious cookies in a Chinese food container and then take a Sharpie and write “Happy Holidays” on the top. Maybe I’ll draw a Christmas tree underneath. And that’s it. Done and Done. Season’s greetings people. Eat your cookies.

How TV made me a better mother

Let me say first of all that we do have limits as far as screen time is concerned, but I'm the first to admit my kids watch plenty of TV. In the morning, all bets are off, and its a TV free for all, although since they are lately late-to-bed-and-late-to-rise, this isn't more than one or two shows usually. I've got Sec with me most afternoons and, as I'm sure you know, she's one high-impact child so I consider it essential to promoting peace on earth to allow her a show or two before we pick up Primo. After homework's done, they'll sometimes take in an episode of Curious George, and if they are ever left in the care of my grandmother they basically are glued to the TV. So TV is not a stranger to our home. The AAP wouldn't stage an intervention but they would frown upon it. And knowing this, I end up beating myself up about their screen time, though there's not a chance in hell I could reduce it. And that's because . . .

Without TV, I would be the world's shittiest mother.Some people's kids will entertain themselves quietly for long stretches of time, reading books to their siblings and playing tea party with their teddy bears. These people can enjoy the liberty of not having a TV in the house and then telling they don't have a TV in the house and feeling great about themselves. But some people have kids who, when left alone for five minutes, kill the fish and take all the feathers out of their pillow and tell the neighbor they hate their outfit. Some people have kids who come to blow while fighting over a wizened poinsettia leaf that was found near the garbage. When you have these kinds of kids, you let them watch TV because if you didn't you'd end up banging your head against the wall in an effort to knock yourself unconscious. That's best case scenario.

Primo has been really worried about the possibility of thunderstorms and tornados lately, making him decidedly opposed to leaving the house. “Decidedly opposed” is the polite way to describe a situation where screaming, yelling, whining, crying and threats are used whenever we have to go out – for a playdate, groceries, birthday party, library. It is taxing. But because I’m a fighter by nature, the kind of person that refuses to admit defeat, I soldier on, forcing him o confront his fears and do what needs getting done. It did occur to me though that perhaps the kid needed to feel like he had more control over the day so I asked him what he’d like to do this weekend and he said, “Let's have a Christmas party!” You may recall that I JUST THREW the birthday party of the century for him, so I vetoed this idea immediately, but then he downgraded the party to simply “invite two friends and their families over to watch Christmas movies.”

Movies, did you say? BINGO. All systems go.

We Tivoed "Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" tossed popcorn in the microwave, and set up blankets and pillows on the floor of the living room. Then David busted out the beer he’s been homebrewing and I put out some Costco guacamole and a Carr’s Entertainment Assortment package of crackers. Instant party.

May I say, too, that it was the most pleasant affairs that I’ve hosted in years? Kids a-chuckling, contained in one corner of the apartment, parents imbibing in the other. There were no fights to break up, no interventions necessary. The most taxing thing was cleaning up the popcorn from the rugs afterwards.Primo was happy, Sec was happy, David was happy and I was happy.

Spontaneous, unstructured play is good and all, but when your kids are impossible and you live in a 900 sq foot apartment, it can be a little much on the nerves. TV, on the other hand, heals all wounds.

So today I say, three cheers for the boob tube! AAP, I love you and all, but just for today, you can suck it.

The Odyssey to Tennessee Part Two Or what mind-alerting drug was I on when I suggested this motherf&*%^ing road trip

To pick up where I left off.

Flight to TN rescheduled for historic blizzard (which turned out to be pretty paltry actually).

Make-up flight cancelled because of feverish child.

That leaves us with: road trip.

David and I have driven to his family’s place in East Tennessee a zillion times before we had kids. Once we were down South and my agent called to say I had an audition the next morning so we just picked up right then, booked it back to NY and made it in time for my audition (was for a vacuum cleaner, I think, lest you think I was reading for something high-profile and exciting). David and I have driven across-country to California three times. We are NOT road trip novices.

But that was before the babies.

Now, we drive to my parents’ place in New Jersey and the two hours spent in the car are filled with such agida I can taste my own bile by the time we get out. The screaming! The pushing and hitting between the car seats! The whining! The demanding of snacks and toys and other items which are instantly dropped to the floorboard where the kids cannot reach them since they are both strapped into a five-point harness car seat and where I am forced to retrieve them, twisting my body around in contortions which I couldn’t even manage back when I was in actual Circus School, much less now, when I am a decrepit shell of a woman.

Here are some things you should know about the way our family rolls:

1. I get extremely car sick.

I had a stomach of steel previous to having children. One Valentine’s Day, my best friend Em and I stuffed my face with sushi, then dashed over to African dance class immediately after and I managed to keep all my food down. I wear that as a badge of intestinal pride. But having severe morning sickness both pregnancies somehow altered my physiological makeup and I now can not so much as glance at a word on a passing sign unless I want to get hit with a tsunami of nausea. Consequently:

2. I don’t read maps or signs or help navigate in any way at all.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we had GPS but we don’t because its just not the sort of thing I ever want to spend our hard-earned dollar on. Besides, David has a freaky sense of direction, super-keen and nearly always unfailing (except for that one time in Anza Borrego, CA, but that’s another story) He is a wunderkind really – can read the directions from the print-out on his lap, keep an eye out for exits while at the same time reaching his insanely long arms into the back seat to fish out Seconda’s sippy cup. He is literally a one-man driving machine.

3. We don’t have a DVD player in the car

This would, likely, solve all our problems. Yet I continue to maintain that the car is a WONDERFUL opportunity for family bonding. Playing 20 Questions and I Spy! Listening to perfectly delightful books-on-tape, like Heidi! Singing as an ensemble to Hey Jude! These are team-building activities. Of course, this only accounts for 5-10% of our time in the car and the rest of the time is taken up by the kids whining and fighting but hey, at least we’re all in it together.

Seeing as this was an extraordinarily long trip, I did bring the emergency portable DVD player which we bought when we took Primo to Italy a few years ago. It cost $90, has under 2 hours battery power, and virtually no control buttons so you can’t fast forward or rewind, but it works well in a pinch. I also packed pasta and sandwiches, tons of snacks, lollipops, licorice, Sweet Tarts, basically anything bribe-like I could get my hands on. Since Seconda had been fever-free all night and early morning, we decided it was all systems go. At 7:30am Monday morning we made tracks.

I want you to know I suggested spending the night at a city half-way along our route. Its what we did the two times we drove to North Carolina and it worked out really well. But David had been delayed two days already in starting his vacation and seeing his family and he didn’t want any more delays. So the plan was to make it to Gatlinburg is a single shot.

Here’s the good news:

The kids were stupendous. For perhaps the first time on this blog, I have to report they so far exceeded my expectations I actually felt a little guilty for doubting them. There was hardly any fighting or whining though quite a lot of contortions in service of picking up shit on he floorboard.

The bad news:

I was in a car with my two children for FOURTEEN HOURS.

We left NYC at 7:30 in the morning and rolled into my in-law’s place at 10:30 that night. And believe me when I say we didn’t do any sight-seeing along the way. With the exception of three 20 minute breaks for leg-stretching, gas refills and Happy Meal toys (more on that tomorrow), we put the pedal to the medal, baby. It was kind of excruciating. Whoever decided Virginia should be so big? I mean, no offense to VA but it took like SIX HOURS to get across it. Delaware, on the other hand, makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something. You really feel like you’re FLYING when you cross the whole state of Delaware in all of fifteen minutes.

The good/ bad news:

A mere three hours after exiting the car Monday night, I started to feel ill. Wake-you-up-and-drive-you-to-the-toilet kind of ill. Then I projectile vomited all those No-Longer-Happy Meals. So the bad news is I got a damn stomach virus as soon as the road trip was over. The good news is I got a damn stomach virus as soon as the road trip was over.

Getting home for the holidays, the hard way

Now that the obligation to spread Christmas joy and cheer is behind us, I feel its time to share with you the story of how we got home for the holidays.

The Odyssey to Tennessee Part One: Grounded

Being prudent, responsible folk, David and I secured our plane reservations for Christmas months ago. I even remembered to call the day before to score the bulkhead, which you’ll remember from my previous posts on the subject is something I feel passionately about. The way in which I packed our suitcase was nothing short of a work of art. I’d handed out gifts and envelopes to everyone on the list - all the teachers and teacher’s helpers, all the doormen and porters and supers. We were in a somewhat shocking state of preparedness for our flight Saturday afternoon.

And then the blizzard struck.

Its not that we didn’t know it was coming. We were just optimistic. But then, Saturday morning, we turned out the news and heard, “a historic snowstorm” . . . “10-20 inches in the city” . . . “canceling all flights” . . . “we’ve never seen anything like it!” Encouraging stuff.

Our flight was rescheduled for the next night at 8pm, which was great, because a lot of people didn’t even get rescheduled. Less than ideal, since traveling at night with my sleep-averse children is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I know how that shit goes down because we’ve been there – oh! how we’ve been there. As I say though, we were just thanking our lucky stars we had seats on something airborne. We decided to make the most of it and headed over to our good friend’s apartment for a pre-blizzard bagel party. We bundled the kids and played in the snow. We filed six months worth of bills and paperwork. We had sex. By the following afternoon, we were in great spirits, and oh-so-ready to rumble.

Until I noticed that Seconda had a fever.

It wasn’t high – 100.3 – but she had the glassy eyes, the bright-red face and the miserable moaning that signifies this was just the beginning. Now, in the summertime, when everyone’s pretty healthy, a little lowgrade fever’s not such a crisis. But in late December, with a swine flu epidemic still in play, and my grandmother, who takes care of Sec, sick in bed with a strep throat -- it didn’t look promising. I’d taken Primo on the plane when he had 104 fever, at the end of our “vacation” to San Francisco, and that was one of the most anxiety-producing experiences yet.

David and I figured since we really didn’t know what this fever was going to turn into, it wasn’t a good idea to take her on the airplane. So I graciously offered to stay with Sec while he went ahead with Primo, and we’d just catch a flight later in the week and meet them down South. That was wildly naïve. No seats nohow to Knoxville – not direct, not connecting, nothing.

Sec fell asleep in the middle of these proceedings, and that was the dealbreaker. Although nearly all other 2.5 year olds on earth are still taking their proscribed afternoon nap, Sec hasn’t slept during daytime hours in months. Even when I locked her in her crib tent, and even when she’s in the car or in the stroller and even when I beg her and bribe her, she never sleeps til darkness falls. Kid was sick. We cancelled the flights.

And then, Eureka! Mommy has an idea.

“Why not drive?” I ask David.

Why not drive?

WHY NOT DRIVE?

I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t drive to Tennessee in a single day with your two children under the age of five. In tomorrow’s post I will tell you about it, in detail, because we flipping DID IT.

My gift to you

Ho ho ho and meeeeerry christmas, everyone!!! I hope you get caught under the mistletoe with a special someone, if that's your speed, or that there's no mistletoe in sight if that would serve you better. I've got Santa-ing to do. But I will offer this quick recollection, as a present to ye faithful.

We were in the car a few days ago listening to this song from our favorite children's poetry collection (and just for total transparency, let me say I get NO incentive for doing so, the publishers of this gem doen't even know I exist, although, hey, it is Christmas so maybe someone could drop them a note and let me know I need a Flip camera . . . ) Anyway, the song is called "The Ghost of Jenny Jemima" and all of us are grooving to it. Then the song ends and Seconda waxes lyrical:

"Oh, I love that Jenny Vagina!!!!!"

Merry Chrismas folks.

Holly Jolly Very Merry Shit to Do

Christmas is a week away and that means there is nonstop holiday shit to do. I’m not complaining. I love holiday shit, so much so that I don’t even mind when Walmart is playing Christmas carols in mid-November. I know it drives other people crazy. I know it’s a deplorable display of the very worst conspicuous consumerism to which the holiday has been reduced. But I don’t care. Hearing Dean Martin croon “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” makes me so damn merry I don’t know what to do.

Of course, I don’t need to think too hard about what to do with all my holly jolly very merry because, remember, there is nonstop holiday shit to do. I’m no Mommy Poppins, master calendar-izer, but I will tell you what we’ve done this December in the way of cheer:

Santaland at Macy’s

Please see yesterday’s post for more specific instructions. This year’s visit was a success since we sailed through the line and the children sat next to Santa all by themselves (does anyone ever sit on Santa’s lap anymore? Aren’t there laws against that?” This was a welcome development because I really hate being in the kiddie Santa pic. Don’t know why, since I have a high threshold of embarrassment, but cozying up to Santa for a snapshot really makes me feel like a major a-hole. I find the Macy’s Santas to be great, by the way, very soft-spoken, take their time, with no trace of alcohol on their breath. The kids were too bewildered, shocked and confused to tell Saint Nick what they wanted for Christmas (Primo: a mechanical bat (help??) and Sec: the ability to chew gum) but no big deal, because Santa just asked how they’d like it if he surprised them. We wanted to catch our favorite local puppet theater, Puppetworks, doing Miracle on 34th Street, on the same floor as Santaland but the timing didn’t work out. Heard it was great, though – made a grown man cry.

Charlie Brown Christmas at the Brooklyn Lyceum

Who doesn’t love Charlie Brown? Despite the fact that much of it flies over their head, both my kids watch the Great Pumpkin and the Christmas show religiously every year. It is thanks to Charlie Brown that Primo now calls his sister a blockhead. But this year, we took our Charlie Brown fan-ship to a new level but watching a live performance of it, accompanied by a jazz trio at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Maybe I’m just starved for theatrical nourishment, but both David and I thought it was frickin’ delightful, especially to the tune of $30 for four tickets. The actors replicated every vocal intonation and gesture of the cartoon characters, from Snoopy’s piano-side dance to the collective laugh at Charlie Brown when he picks out a pathetic tree. Almost avant-garde. Kind of reminded me of a Richard Maxwell play, House, I saw a million years ago. I’m not sure how it compares with Streetcar but thanks to BAM’s exorbitant ticket prices, I guess I’ll never know. .

The Colonial Nutcracker at Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts

At bedtime, we’ve been reading Primo E.T.A Hoffman’s The Nutcracker, which I’ve had for decades and never once cracked open. I never thought he’d make it more than a page or two because the language is really dense -- makes Lewis Carroll look like an Easy Reader. But he is mesmerized, mainly thanks to Godfather Drosselmeier. So we downloaded the suite onto his secondhand ipod shuffle and now he’s obsessed with the music, too. So we figured it was a good time to introduce him to the Nutcracker ballet. I opted for this one over the New York Theater version for one reason: the tickets costs $6, instead of $35. Was a good thing too because although Primo was raring to go, after the first half hour he was restless and by the end he was loudly asking, “WHEN is this going to be OVER?? I am TIRED of watching people DANCE.” But all in all, he did enjoy it although he was dreadfully disappointed by the fact that the Mouse Kind only had one head. Me too. I mean, when you’re expecting a seven-headed rodent, just the one head is a big letdown.

Sunday Mass at Saint Francis Xavier

I figured I should include this in the holiday preparations, although I wouldn’t say it was fun, necessarily. I mean, the mass part was fine. I love our church. But the getting there was kind of a Herculean trial. Primo is now scared of the Bible (can’t blame him really, that is some scary stuff) so he screamed and whined the whole way over, refused to go to the Children’s Liturgy of the Word even though I always go with him, and then he informed me (loudly) that the beautiful choir music was “very awful-sounding.” But it was a nice antidote to all the shopping madness that’s heating up to hear a message about sharing love and peace and joy with others.

So I’ll leave you with that. Peace! Joy!

Surviving Santaland

I feel I wasn't totally transparent in yesterday's post. I'm not just one of those parents who perpetuates the Santa myth. I am a Santa nut. Evidence of this is the fact that I go to Santaland at Macy's every year. Since I've had four Christmases under my belt, I've gotten the Santaland experience to an exact science and know how to get in and out --from front door of Macy's to paying for our picture -- in under an hour. I'm not going to TELL you of course. If I did, the forumla would be ruined because the tens of thousands of readers I have who always heed my sagacious advice would rush Santaland during this crowd-less window of oppurtunity. So it will just be my little secret. But hey, I'm no grinch. I'll offer some gems of wisdom in the form of telling you what NOT to do. Get ready folks -- its a cautionary tale. As seen in the Fall '07 issue of the Park Slope Reader . . .

SURVIVING SANTALAND

By Nicole Caccavo Kear

I really, really love Christmas. But not all Christmases everywhere. I love Christmas in New York. Sad to say, yuletide festivities in all other places are destined to be sub-par. I know this for certain because since tying the knot, I’ve spent every other Christmas with my in-laws in Tennessee, and though they do a bang-up job which includes wild bear meat, red velvet cake and an evergreen dragged directly out of the backyard, how could they compete with the lighting extravaganza of Dyker Heights? The windows of Saks Fifth Avenue? The Rockefeller tree? But there is one respect in which my in-laws are lucky not to spend the holiday season in New York. No one in East Tennessee has to wait five hours to see Santa at Macy’s.

Neither do I of course. There’s no Santaland imperative. There is, in fact, a million reasons not to go, besides the ridiculous line—it represents the worst side of Christmas—the tacky, mass consumerism part. But I’ve been a Santaland junkie since I was two and my parents took me for my inaugural visit. I can’t disabuse myself of the notion that it’s the best, the Rolls Royce of mall Santas. Natalie Wood went there, I went there, and my kids will go to, no matter how much we all have to suffer in the process. Yes, when it comes to the Santaland habit, I’m a lost cause. But there may be hope for others out there, which is why I’ve fashioned a primer, a kind of Santaland for Dummies. Learn from my mistakes, ye faithful.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Santaland

1. Don’t go.
2. If you must go, make it after Christmas. Santa may not be there but neither will the crowds.
3. If you must go before Christmas, take a sedative.
4. Don’t be duped into optimism after getting to the front of the line for the special elevator that goes Express to Santaland! This just takes you to the real line.
5. Don’t curse loudly when, upon seeing the line, you realize the enormity of your mistake.
6. Don’t ask the elf to repeat herself three times when she tells you the wait is five hours.
7. Don’t publicly berate your child when, after reaching the front of the line five hours later, he refuses to sit on Santa’s lap. Don’t yell, “Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you? Mommy’s been waiting ALL DAY!”
8. Don’t make the rest of the line wait as you bribe, threaten, cajole, beg and order your child to “Get on Santa’s Lap Right Now!”
9. Don’t put the picture of your child, bawling hysterically on Santa’s lap, on next year’s Christmas card.
10. If all else fails, move to East Tennessee.

*As the blogger behind Seasonal Crap pointed out, yo'll find no respite from tacky, over-the-top mass consumerism in East Tennessee. So don't move to Pigeon Forge expecting that. What I meant was, you won't have to wait five hours to get it. The fruits of your commercialisic zeal will be delivered to you within minutes!!!

The Santa Situation

Multiple Choice Time

When you tell your kid that Santa is real, is it:

A lie?

The gift of magic?

Just pretend?

About a week ago, a mother posted to the ParkSlopeParents listserv with the subject heading, “Pretending Santa is Real?” and she asked, basically, if there was a way to allow your kids to believe in Santa without lying to them.

Parents today don’t like to lie to kids. Me included. I am a huge believer in straight-shooting when it comes to dealing with my kids. If we’re going to the doctor and my son asks me, in tears, “Am I going to have a shot?” I never say “No” if I know the answer is “Yes,” even though that would be easier. This may not sound like much to you but its notable because I am, in general, kind of a liar, I’m not pathological or anything. I just am not a terribly honest person, like my I-cannot-tell-a-lie-‘twas-I-who-cut-down-the-cherry-tree of a husband. What can I tell you? I learned to lie from my parents.

They didn’t deceive me about anything terribly important, but they did constantly put forth flimsy untruths for the sale of convenience. If they wanted me to try some food I didn’t like, they’d tell me it was something I did like. Here’s a piece of watermelon. Haha! It was a tomato! Gotcha. Whenever they didn’t want me to partake of something – whether it was a gumball machine, a sandbox or a kiddie ride – the thing would be “broken,” despite the fact that it would mysteriously work for other children. And stores never had my (very common) size in any of the brand-name shoes I coveted, though they always had an extensive selection in the knock-offs for half the price. So amidst all these little fictions, asserting that Santa was a man of flesh and blood was totally unobjectionable.

But modern parents, like myself, try at all costs to tell the truth. There are, of course, evasions. I won’t say “Yes you’re getting a shot, maybe a few, and it’s gonna hurt like hell, so brace yourself.” Instead I said, “I’m not sure.” But I try, even then, adhere closely to the spirit of truth.

Which brings us to Santa. For the past few months, my worrywart of a son has been asking David and I constantly if all manner of things -- some fantasy, some not, most scary – are real. Witches, zombies, ghosts, twisters, Jonah in the whale, people who kidnap children, man-eating lions, Martians. I try to answer as honestly as I can while assuaging his worry. (Martians: no. Witches: no. Ghosts: in a good way. Twisters: avoid the Midwest.)

So, considering his unflagging pursuit of truth, it seemed likely that Primo would pop the big Santa question this season. David and I wanted to be prepared.

“I don’t think I can tell him that Santa is real when he’s not,” I said.

“Who said Santa isn’t real?” David replied.

“Are you joking?” I said.

“No,” he continued, “I believe in Santa.”

I gave him a “cut the bullshit, the kids are asleep already” look.

“I do,” he said, “The idea of Santa is real for me, and that’s what I will tell him.”

Man, sometimes those dads really pull it out in the clutch. I thought that was a brilliant response. I DO believe in Santa, even though I know there’s no beneficent overweight long-haired stranger sliding down my non-exisitent chimney.

So I was prepared to tow the “Mommy believes in Santa,” line. But the amazing thing is, although he’s asked a dozen times a day if other fantastical things are real – manticores, fiends, two-headed monsters – he has not once inquired about the veracity of Santa. He’s no dummy. He just chooses to believe.

The people who replied to the ParkSlopeParents post had all sorts of interesting perspectives. The majority said they have no qualms about the Santa myth, because allowing them to have this magic in their lives when they’re young enough to really believe is a gift. A bunch of people said they were really devastated when they found out Santa wasn’t real, that they felt they’d been lied to by their parents so they now tell their kids the story of Santa but clarify that its not real, just a beautiful, magical story. A few people mentioned the difficulty of raising kids who don’t celebrate Christmas and thus know that Santa isn’t real but are treated like heathen killjoys if they leak the news to their Santa-believing friends. It was a really interesting discussion.

What about you? What have you told (or not told) your kids about Santa? Do you feel like it’s a lie, or a myth or just magical realism? And for parents of the older kids, when can I expect my son’s run of Santa faith to end?