Christmas Magic and The Year That Santa Came

In the past few weeks, a few different people have shared their Christmas traditions with me and others via social media.  Why they do Santa, why they don't do Santa, what variations they may have on traditional themes, what special activities they do together as a family, on and on.  More than once, it has brought me to tears - for many of these stories reflect the true nature of giving that is so vital to the Christmas spirit.

All this made me reflect on the Christmas traditions I grew up with... and the new meanings that came to them in recent years.

My childhood Christmas traditions were pretty typical.  We went to the mall to see Santa.  We baked cookies - chocolate crinkles and chocolate chip and peanut butter and sugar cookies shaped like stars, trees, bells, snowmen, wreaths, etc.  My parents taught me the true meaning of Christmas - why we celebrate - the birth of Christ, we went to church on Christmas eve, we read the story of the first Christmas, but our holiday always included both religious and secularized elements.  I was a stickler for the Jesus aspect of Christmas growing up - I remember one year as a child, we were making Christmas cookies and I realized there was no baby Jesus, which was just wrong in my eyes, so I set to work with construction paper (blue), drew and cut out a Jesus-in-a-manger shape to use as a cookie cutter.  And my mom, bless her heart, didn't tell me that logistically, you couldn't make a cookie cutter out of paper, or suggest we look for a cutter to buy instead... no, she took my paper craft and carefully traced around it with a knife to cut out several hunks of cookie dough that, by my estimation, looked exactly like baby Jesus.  I was so proud of those cookies.

But I digress.  What I mean to say here is that my Christmases were full of magic - both in the childish sense (that I was determined never to outgrow - my mom had to tell me the news about Santa when I was eleven) and the true sense of the season of Christ.  I never wanted for anything.  I'd go through catalogs before Christmas and circle everything I wanted (might as well have just circled the whole catalogs), I ran to my mom after every commercial and cried "Mom!  I want that!  I want that!"  Big tree- always real - decked out in colored lights and tinsel and garland and ornaments that had been in our family for years... And on Christmas morning, I woke up to piles of gifts that spread out far past 'under' the tree.

We had celebrations with both sides of my family, celebrations with my best friend, cards from far away family members (and sometimes special gifts), and boy, I was probably the most spoiled kid who ever lived. But I was thankful.  I used to write in my letter to Santa "Here are some cookies and a carrot for your reindeer.  I have been good and thank you for the presents I haven't recieved yet" (that was not a typo - I couldn't spell received until eighth grade).  One year, 'Santa' wrote back that one of his reindeer (I forget which one) liked his carrot dipped in peanut butter - so I left peanut butter out every year too.  And my mom didn't neglect to let me know that Santa really preferred Dr. Pepper to milk.  ;)

I was really a lucky kid.  Even as I got older and our Christmases became a little more modest and more about giving than receiving, I still never had any idea what it was to go without, especially on Christmas.

My dear borrowed kids came to me in high school - at least the girls - my Junior year.  AJ wasn't born until I was in college.  What became clear right away is that the kind of Christmas I'd grown up with, was something they had yet to experience.  When they were 3 and 7 years old, we had our first gift exchange - and oh yes, you'd better bet we went overboard, especially after hearing that A's big gift the previous year had been a new coat.  I have the cutest pictures from Christmas that year, my two girls dressed up in the outfits we carefully picked out... and of course balanced with an equal number of toys, because what kid wants clothes for a gift?  (Well, it turns out, these ones do.  Neither one of them has ever had that 'eh, clothes' reaction.  They were thankful for each and every article.)

A couple, just for cuteness' sake.

M, age 7

A, age 3 (love how this one captured her silliness!)

Girls by the tree

Every year after that we had our own little 'Christmas' with the girls.  Some years one or both of them didn't get much else, because times were troubled at home.

But as A got older, she started to ask a whole lot of questions - wanted to know if Santa was really coming, how would he know whose house she was at, would he really bring her what she asked for, would he come to my house, Mamaw's house, mommy's house?

A had so little real 'magic' in her early life, I wanted her to have 'Santa'.  I wanted her to believe in magic, to have that childlike wonder and joy and just get to be innocent for a time, and so when she asked me, I assured her that Santa was coming if she made good choices (we do not say "good girl/bad girl in this house).  I knew it couldn't last forever, only as long as I could keep the promise to her myself, but I wanted her to have it for however long she could.  M actually believed for a while too, even told off her classmates a couple times over it!

We'd always done our Christmas in the evening one day, because that's when I usually had M, although in later years we took to having sleepovers for Christmas because the girls always wanted to play with their new toys together (and no, they are not sisters).  A was usually here over night for one reason or another anyways.  The year A was six, I had almost thought we weren't going to be able to spend Christmas together.  Prior to our celebration, which occurred the weekend before Christmas, I hadn't seen her in seven weeks.  That was the year the second Ellfant was born.

It was one of the happiest Christmases I could remember, because my little girl was home.  I remember we got her 'Elefun' that year, and after we made gingerbread (okay, graham cracker) houses and opened presents, we all tried to catch those crazy little butterflies until the three of us collapsed in a giggling heap on the floor and my heart was so full I had to hold back tears.  Then we went out to look at Christmas lights in the car and eat candy canes, and these sweet little voices were singing Christmas carols from the back seat the whole way, eyes lighting up in wonder at the most elaborately decorated houses.

Just... happy.

The fun of that year, and how neither of them wanted it to end, and all the questions A started asking about Santa, made me think a little harder about the following year.  It would be AJ's first year of celebrating Christmas with us, since he'd only been less than two months old the previous year.  M was through her Santa days, but had experienced plenty of magic thanks to her wonderful mom, who did everything she could to make Christmas special for M every year.  A, though... that year she was six, when I asked her what she did on Christmas day (I saw her the next day), if Santa came to mommy's house too... "No, we just didn't do nothin'.  Santa didn't have a tree to put presents under so he just brought them all to your house."

It was then that I realized the one bit of the magic she was missing.  The sleepless night on Christmas eve, startling at every noise, thinking you heard reindeer paws on your roof, checking the clock every hour, looking out the window for the first hint of dawn that meant it was okay to wake up the adults, coming downstairs and seeing the house instantly transformed to a place of magic over night because Santa had been there.  So the next year, I resolved to give her the whole experience.  It turned out to be easier than I thought because she wound up living with me on and off that year anyways.

I sat down with M and explained that even though I knew she didn't 'believe' anymore, I wanted this to be special for A and I needed her help.  I told her what my mom told me about Santa - it's not that he's not real, because he is.  He's not a fat guy in a red suit who comes down your chimney, but 'Santa' is the spirit of giving, the little bit of magic in us all, the effort we put forth every year to give our kids that magic - and now that she was big enough, she was part of 'Santa' too, and I couldn't do it without her help.  Sweet M took the words to heart and helped me make the year magic.

We did everything 'by the book'.  The girls wrote letters to 'Santa' and left out cookies, a carrot, and some peanut butter.  I showed them the letters that Santa wrote back to me as a child, especially the one about the peanut butter.  They drew pictures for Santa too.  We all hung our stockings by the fireplace.  We sat by the Christmas tree before bed and read 'The Night Before Christmas', and of course the story of the first Christmas.  Then I put little one year old AJ to bed and the two little girls (one of whom I'm pretty sure was actually bouncing off the walls) in their BRAND NEW Christmas present room that we'd painted and decorated just for them (the following picture is the looks on their faces the moment they saw it).

I'll translate those expressions for you:  "This is for ME?!"

Now, the thing of it was, I had quit my job just a few months before that Christmas.  I was a full time student, caring for two little girls and a baby whose formula cost TWENTY SIX DOLLARS A CAN.  O, alimentum, how I loathe thee.  I was commuting a half an hour each way to and from school every day, with detours thrown in to pick up and drop off kids at school or childcare arrangements.  Things were tight.  The reason we decorated their room for a gift was because we already had most of what we needed and the rest we bought with gift cards that had been sitting around forever.  It was most costly in labor, which we did ourselves.  Other than that, I only had a couple presents for each of them - but I was doing stockings for the first time, and fruit is cheap and fits well, so that helped.  Still, though, I felt like we'd set the bar too high on the gift front in previous years, and while I knew they'd be happy, when all the presents were bought and then A chose to ask Santa for things she hadn't even told me she'd wanted - I didn't know what to do!  Santa couldn't let her down, not this year!

I remember crying to my friends one night online - friends I knew from a message board, mostly, only a few of whom had met me or the girls.  A wanted a pillow pet.  Those stupid things were twenty dollars.  I'd had the 'Cinderella dress to match my shoes' since Halloween - but the kid sprung the pillow pet on me at the last minute.  I racked my brain for how to get her one.  Then M showed up wearing her mom's (far too big) coat one day, saying she didn't have one.  Another thing I hadn't planned on buying.  I looked for that one in a swap section of our board.  It had to be bought, she needed it.

Eventually I swallowed my pride, planned to wrap everything separately and fill in with homemade gifts.

Then Santa came.

First, he came in the form of a friend, who sent me a message to tell me she was going to be in my area soon, and her son was just a little older than AJ, would I want some of the toys he had never really played with for AJ's Christmas?

Cue tears.  She presented me with two BIG BAGS of gifts, including a coat that HE desperately needed.

Then came the friend who wrote to tell me after Thanksgiving that she'd been at her pastor's sermon on random acts of kindness, and as she sat thinking of whom she could be kind to, A's face popped into her head.  She had some credit at gymboree, and she loved buying girl clothes but she didn't have a daughter, would I please let her send something for A?

Let her?  I cried again.  Told her she didn't have to, but that we were struggling and if she wanted to buy girl clothes, A certainly needed them.  Yeah, I made sure she had sufficient clothing, but, you know, my girly girl... she always wanted more pretty things.

Then came the friend who sent me a picture of a coat, and did I think it would fit M?  I told her yes, I thought it would, and asked her how much she wanted for it.

She put it in the mail and told me not to worry about it.  She didn't need it anyways, she said.

Tears again.

The straw that broke the camel's back though... was maybe a week before Christmas... just after I'd had the breakdown over the pillow pet situation... and lo and behold, one day, a package came addressed to me from Amazon... but I hadn't ordered anything.  I opened it... and I thought the tears would never stop.  Not only the coveted pillow pet, but the perfect one for A, and not just that, but a gift card, so that I could get something 'for me or for the kids'... from another friend.

Here I'd resigned myself to having to explain the absence of the pillow pet... and it shows up unexpected at my door.

Tell me that's not 'Santa' in the truest form.

When it came time to wrap the gifts, some of them were from me, and I wrote that on the tags.  But some of them weren't from me.  They were from the collective kindness of a world who wanted to help me make the kids' Christmas special.  I couldn't take credit for that.

Those tags read 'Santa'.

After the kids were in bed that night, I stayed up late arranging the presents just perfectly, stuffing stockings, eating cookies, and of course writing a note back from Santa about their good choices.

When A saw this, she shouted "HE ATE THE COOKIES!"

Michael's, one dollar, and glitter glue.  Awesome.

Didn't turn out too shabby at all.

When M questioned me about it in private later about the Santa gifts, after the discussion we'd already had about keeping up the pretense for the little kids, I looked at her straight faced and said, "No, those really did come from Santa.  Remember what I told you?  I didn't buy those things.  They came from people who just wanted to give - and that's what Santa is."

I took picture after picture of that year's magic.

The one everyone commented on though, was one I didn't even realize I was in until later.

Why?  Surprisingly, not for the cute little girl in the foreground... but for goofy old me in the previous day's clothes in the background...

They all said I looked so genuinely happy and that they could just see how much I loved those kids.

And they were right.  Because the biggest present Santa brought that year was for me... the perfect Christmas with my babies.

Oh, and this.  Best gift ever.

So, when people ask me if we 'do' Santa, I tell them yes - because he's real.  And most adults look at me warily, like I might start speaking in tongues or something, but if they'd been there, the year that Santa came, they'd believe too.