Christmas was lovely. This was the first year of my life I can say I genuinely enjoyed watching my kids open all their stuff more than I worried about my own gifts (well, mostly ;).
We went back and forth and back and forth about whether or not to tell Sophia the truth about Santa. There are some people in life I really respect who think it is wrong to lie to your kids about Santa, and I am really, really black and white about lying in every other area of my life. But I LOVED believing in Santa as a kid. I love movies about Santa. I love love love Christmas and I as a kid always knew it was about Jesus and got all the magic and wonder of both believing in Santa and understanding about Jesus too.
But in a moment of feeling like Santa was taking over the Jesus focus, we finally told Sophia that Santa is a game we play, and he is pretend and Jesus is real, and you know what? She didn't care - it was as if we had never told her anything. She wanted to put out cookies and milk and a carrot for the reindeer, she wrote a note and was so excited to see it gone in the morning She embraced Santa wholeheartedly and just did all the Santa stuff anyway and we all had a ball- and she lit the advent wreath and sang a beautiful song to Jesus too.
I took a video of her and she explained Christmas to me, just like Emma did. This is how she sorts it : the Grinch is not real, he is on tv. Santa is different, he is a real pretend guy, and Jesus is real. And I realized that's how I feel about Santa too. He's always been a very real pretend guy in my life as well and on Christmas morning when my daughter said "Oh wow! Santa got me just what I wanted!" I felt only joy, joy, joy.
About Me
- joanna
- I am a Mum who likes to tell stories about my 3 great kids and our lives together. The name of our family blog comes from when my daughter Sophia was 4, and she was standing at the top of our rail-less, sky-lit staircase, and said to her sister,"Oh Eleanor, you can't go down the stairs all alone with nothing but the purple sky to hold you!" While choosing the name for our school blog, I was battling with my son on my lap, who was yelling, "who would lick my foot for a prize?" After his sister actually thought it would be worth it and took the challenge, the title was born.
4 comments:
awww....sounds like a beautiful christmas! i am going to try my best to call you this long weekend in anticipation of you being home. as for santa, my parents told me he was fake from the get-go so we never did the milk and cookies or anything. maybe i wish i had done that....i dunno. sounds like she embraced everything wholeheartedly and in grace....the soph way. ;) love you!
Dawn Hawley Konforty says:
Sophia is wonderful, and Eleanor is so precious in the costume!
thats a great story Jo. My parents to this day only put out about half of the gifts under the tree before christmas, and then on christmas morning when we come down stairs all the ones from santa are out and in different wrapping paper. It's so fun. Now Sophia will grow up just as excited about Santa as any other kid, yet she wont have any chance of going through heartbreak finding out he's not real.
This is great. I am totally telling emma that this year, or you could come over and tell her. hmmm, that's a great Idea. I get to hang out with you all, and emma gets to know the truth about Santa. I wonder how I found out he was fake?
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