Merry Christmas Everyone

The girls are 7 this year and still believe in Santa Claus, although Sarah is not too sure about those ‘helper Santas’ she sees in the malls. Mind you, we haven’t let them near a mall Santa since their JK Christmas field trip to the Cumberland Heritage Village museum, when Caroline told the Santa there not to bring her Mummy any more underwear. The previous Christmas she had been wondering why Santa gave Mummy so much underwear, and I told her I suspected that Santa thought Mummy needed lots of little bits of lace. Anyway, Caroline made sure she set Santa straight the next time she saw him. This of course was relayed back to me by the mothers who had volunteered to help that day. Santa obviously didn’t take the hint, as I received more lacey bits that year and Caroline was totally baffled. When our rector asked her after last year’s Christmas Eve service what she thought Mummy would get for Christmas, she just heaved an exasperated sigh, and said “Oh, probably more underwear.” It’s a wonder I can still show my face around this village.
Dodgy mall Santas or not, the girls still believe and both have already written their letters. Sarah is very concerned because she only realized after she mailed hers that she misspelled horse. Instead of asking Santa for a real horse, a white one if he can manage it, she asked for a real hose. She’s been going around for the past week, slapping her forehead and saying, “ I can’t believe I left out the R”. Meanwhile, I’m gift wrapping a length of rubber tubing. I understand she plans to name it Snowflake.
As for a horse with an R, I’ve explained that Santa has to check all requests for pets and other four-legged creatures (like the reindeer Caroline asked for) with Mummies and Daddies, and we don’t think she’s old enough to have her own horse quite yet. For one thing she has to be tall enough to saddle up by herself. I figure that alone ought to buy me at least 10 years. Besides, we’ve already given in to the dog lobby, so I think we’ve done our bit. Hopefully waking up Christmas morning and not finding a horse and reindeer stabled in the garage won’t be too much of a disappointment.
So as the weeks leading up to Christmas fill with wishes big and hay-eating, and small and lacey, the ‘helper’ Santas in our household work tirelessly to keep the magic alive while hoping to impress upon our two little letter writers that it’s not what you get that’s important. After I explained about the horse and reindeer thing, new letters were written. This time it wasn’t just a list of I wants, but a request to bring presents for everyone in the family, and one ends like this:
Thank you Santa,
p.s.: You may take the cookies home, and take a bag of them to share. We left stuff for the reindeer too.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.