Santa Can Wait
December 16, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
While I’m contemplating where to locate twinkling bike lights and as it’s the holiday season, I thought I’d make a confession:
Charlie’s never sat on Santa Claus’s lap.
We have tried, when he was much younger and we found ourselves in a mall in New Jersey, the land of malls and mallrats. Or maybe we had gone to the mall that day for that sole purpose. Something about “mall air” and the deliberately smiling velvet-clad elves/Santa’s helpers, and the line of overly excited, bored, or wandering about children, led Jim to say, quite wisely: “Let’s get out of here.”
We never really brought up the matter after that. Charlie was around 4 or 5 then and he wasn’t too inclined to sit on anyone’s lap for too long, and we worried about what if he got upset and back-arched while Santa was a ho-ho-ho-ing, and we found ourselves handed a picture of forced smile Santa and not smiling Charlie, for a not-cheap price. And so we kept sending out photo cards with Charlie in random candids, usually shot outside (and often from the summer, by the ocean).
On once relaying our guess-we-gave-up-on-the-Santa-thing, I was immediately reminded by my mom of the response that both my sister and I had while sitting on the lap, or even getting near, Jolly Old St. Nick. “You cried,” my mom said. And, indeed, there’s nary a photo of me on Santa’s lap in the rather extensive photo and slide archives in my parents’ house.
Which brings to me to a quandary that’s a sort of corollary: The whole matter of telling Charlie about the guy in the red suit who comes down the chimney and, for that matter, the bunny that brings the basket full of Easter eggs, and the fairy who takes away your teeth and brings coins……while we’ve talked about all these to Charlie at the appropriate holidays, as of a couple of years ago, we ceased to. Charlie never developed any particular interest in any of those make-believe characters. He’s never been one for stuffed animals (aside from the says-100-things Barney he used to have) and his main concern regarding his teeth was getting that loose hanging thing out of his mouth.
Part of me feels that maybe we didn’t try enough to explain about Santa Claus et al., and the other part of me sends out a reminder: You would have had to reveal that Santa = Dad and Mom anyways.
What Charlie most seems to be interested in during the holidays is seeing my parents and staying in their house at the bottom of a hill in Oakland, California, and eating in a lot of Chinese restaurants with food-laden lazy Susans swinging ’round. I have a rather large extended family who likes to get together and, as the three of us usually only visit once a year (Charlie and I did go out to California in June, but it was a very teary visit as Charlie really missed Jim), Christmas has become a time to connect and reconnect with my relatives (I haven’t lived in California for over twenty years). As it’s rather likely that we may end up in California, we try to pack in a lot in each visit, and our time on the west coast with Charlie—it means a lot to show him and Jim all the places (Chinatown, where my grandmother Ngin-Ngin still lives; the cemetery where Yeh Yeh, my grandfather, and many other relatives are buried) that made up my world as a girl.
Yes, Santa will just have to wait.
Same here Kristina!
I can email you a couple of photos of school Santa’s handing over a gift; Boo and Bratty may appear in the corner of the photograph as they take off with the gift.
Logically speaking I cannot even begin to say what is wrong with teaching our kids to sit on a stranger’s knee and smile!
As for the night time visitor? Boo had huge issues with a stranger coming into the house in the night, so we told him we would go and get the presents from Santy (one Autie family friend had to put all their sons presents on the front door step) And I remember the year he perseverated on the fear “I want No Santy, no reindeer and no sleigh in C***land Court!”
And I will never forget the one and only year “He got it” and poured over the half eaten cookie, bitten carrot and cotton wool in the door. But 1/2 an hour later, he had gone back to his computer and Mr hammie and I were still undoing the twist tie fasteners on all the boxes of toys.
This year, Santy has been to ebay and found some Simpsons Boxed sets. (Santy was shown the ebay search quite helpfully ~:) and he is bringing a Singapore Airlines Megatop to take us to Oz.
I agree with you: it will be about family for us too!
<MY family.
xx
As much as all my kids were really into Santa – especially Alex who was always the one who left the milk & cookies out – none of them have ever sat on his lap. Alex was likely the only one who experienced getting a gift from him first hand, though the gift was not from Santa himself, Santa’s job was to hand out the gifts the children exchanged with each other at Camp Gencheff when Alex used to attend their Christmas parties.
Alex loves all the rituals of Christmas and always has. Here is one of my favorite videos of Alex – at 5, on Christmas Day 1993, Christmas Caroling on our doorstep. Alex still has only a 3 word vocabulary at this point (”no”, “oh-no” and “bye”) so although he has the tunes down, the “words” are in his own language. His carol book is a blank sheet of paper folded in half. This was entirely Alex’s initiative, all I did was grab the camera and capture the moments (at the front door in the afternoon and at the back door at night)
We still talk about Santa and his reindeer, and that he has something to do with Christmas, watch our “Father Christmas” video, go to the mall and take in “Santa’s workshop”, the kids lined up and those who are sitting on his lap. Eleanor can say who Santa is and that he rides the sleigh, brings toys, etc., but she has not indicated any interest in telling Santa her “wish” or sitting on his lap…so that’s okay, and at this point she is kind of long in the tooth for doing that whole thing anyway.
The big annual Christmas season rituals in our house are advent calendars (playmobil, daily “surprise” drawers and chocolate) and decorating the tree and house, which Eleanor enjoys. I believe that those things are more significant to her than the fella in red.
Have a nice trip.
We don’t push Santa Claus as a concept or event either for the same reasons as all the other posters, and this year (age 5) is the first year Bobby has linked the tree and neighborhood decorations to the phrase “Merry Christmas.” He recognizes the character of Santa Claus, and likes the long white beard, but doesn’t know he is to expect presents. It’s kinda nice to not have to deal with a case of the “gimmes” at the store! He knows presents go with birthday parties, though, so we’re leaning more toward teaching “Happy Birthday Baby Jesus” than Santa Claus at this time of year. Of course, that’s still a v-e-r-y basic concept, too.
DuckyBoy doesn’t do the lap thing with anyone very often (except Grandma). Last year HE was into it so we got a photo, but otherwise, I think it’s overrated. No one did that when I was growing up so I think it’s just another instance of holiday-tradition-creep anyway… ya see somebody else do it and think everybody has to.
By happenstance we got a nice candid this year of DB standing in front of Santa at Grandma’s church fair, earnestly talking with him. (He was a very good Santa– real beard and all.) My heart breaks at the sincere expression on both their faces. I’m soo afraid he’s going to be p*ssed-off when he finds out (he’s 6) that I’m already trying to compose my wording.
I’ll be curious to see what Nik does this weekend when we go ride the “Santa Clause Express” train as we did lst year. He has no concept of Christmas or Santa but I don’t think he has any phobia, either.
Oliver’s mom, Christine, said something in a post that has stuck with me and been my guide this year: “…traditions are there to support us, not the other way around.”
That has made a really big difference in letting go of thinking I have to make Christmas a certain way for Nik.
Santas now have gotten a clue: children are invited to stand next to Santa as an option to the lap. I’ve seen it done with the more enlightened fathers, er Santas, and it is an elegant solution.
“Some people believe that a man called Santa Claus delivers all the presents. We do not believe that. We believe that Christmas is a time of magic.” Simple, honest and directly spoken. Next time we can talk about the birds and the bees!
yep same here too. Matt actually did it one time when he was 18 months old. He grabbed a fistful of beard and another fistful of moustache and screamed bloody murder. We rescued poor Santa from super babys grip and decided Santa was a little overrated…lol
Alec loves the whole idea of christmas and santa but the one thing that has him really confused was the christmas cards he got from class mates that say “happy new year” he walks around with them shakes his head and says.. mum that just doesn’t make sense.
As for santa photos, we have a few but Alec looks a little wary in them, Riley our nt on the other hand can’t walk by santa without feeling the need to just go and tell santa sumpfink where as Alec likes to observe from a distance
@Niksmom,
second what Christine said about traditions—it’s so easy to turn them into rituals and to forget the spirit of it all. and it is a cliché, but our Christmases with Charlie have always and ever reinforced in us, what the holiday really is for.
The pix we have of our kids with Santa are all from their very early infancy. They won’t go near Santa or even consider it. We do have one from Macy’s in SF that has our entire family in it, with my husband and I holding our two boys (we had only two at the time), flanking Santa.
We’ve never pushed the Santa thing, but they picked up on it, TH when he was about four (?) and Dubya at about the same age. And here we are, ages 6 and 7, and they are both deeply skeptical of the whole concept. I’ve never been comfortable with it as an outright lie and have evasively always referred to Santa as the “giving spirit of Christmas.”
Ha!
We, too, had to rescue Santa and his beard from my guy. Luckily we snapped the photo right before the assault : )
And here is a freebie tip for parents looking for babysitters. If your babysitters’ resume/experience lists being an elf to Santa, snap them up! Our best babysitter was an elf to Santa – she was the greatest!