THE WONDER YEARS

One of the girls from my hockey team posted on Facebook recently “help, my kids are driving me nuts about Santa Claus, they want to know if he’s real, I don’t know what to say, I don’t feel right lying to my children.”  She got all kinds of answers, everything from you should tell them the truth to let them believe in the magic as long as they can.  My response was that my children are now 12 and 14 and I’ve never told them Santa is not real – he is real!  The next night she posted “help, my son is now searching google earth for the north pole.”  The responses were hilarious – everything from “don’t you know that there is a shield over the North Pole to prevent being discovered by google earth to the North Pole is in a different dimension.”

Brought me back when the boys were younger, Christmas was so special and magical.  Our Christmas is still special because we are a close family and we spend a lot of time together, but the magic of Christmas isn’t quite the same when your children don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore.  I always tell the boys that Santa is real and now they play along with me so they don’t ruin my Christmas.  When my oldest was about four years old, we were decorating the house for Christmas and after decorating the tree we had an extra string of lights.  I happened to go upstairs and walk past the boys’ room just in time to see my husband stringing the set of lights on a bookshelf in the boy’s room.  I walked in and asked “what are you doing, that looks like crap” and just then my son comes in and screams with delight “oh mommy, look daddy put cwistmas wites in my room, cwistmas wites in my room.”  He then ran around the room giggling the most magnificent giggle I’ve ever heard.  Funny thing is I was just about to say that the lights looked bloody tacky  – take them down.  I couldn’t, didn’t have the heart – my son was so happy and as he stood there looking up at the bright lights, his eyes were full of wonderment and magic.  It was a special moment and a moment he’s never forgotten.  My husband was the hero and I was in disbelief because the bloody string of lights looked horrendous.

That Christmas we had quite a few guests over several days and every person who walked into our house was greeted by a four-year old with blonde curly hair, big saucer eyes and a mile wide smile.  He grabbed every guest’s hand and said ” you must come and see the cwistmas wites in my room, come you have to come and see what my daddy did.”  He would then take our guest up to his room to show off his cwitmas wites.   It was a special time to see the magic in his eyes over those hideous Christmas lights – “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” and that Christmas my son taught my husband and I the true meaning of Christmas.    Last year I posted the lyrics of “Little Drummer Boy” in pa rum pum pum.   Beautiful video below of Pentatonix singing about a simple boy with a simple gift  – enjoy!