My kids have always had a tenuous relationship with Santa. They usually get one Santa present and when they were younger, it was the nicest one. We've always maintained our Christian belief and brought the kids up to give props to Jesus on his special day. So we try to make Santa a peripheral figure in the Christmas background. One Christmas, when Tucker was six or so, he thought the Holy Trinity was God, Jesus and Santa Claus. When I informed that it was God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, he looked at me with his big brown eyes and a duh-mom expression on his face, he declared "Then what's the deal with Santa mom? He spies on you like God and doesn't give you presents if you're bad, which being bad is sinning." It took awhile to unravel that mess, but I have to admit from a six-year old's perspective his logic was sound. I told him Santa Claus is the Americanized version of the Dutch name for St. Nicholas (Sinter Klaus). Then I had to explain who St.Nicholas was, which led to what a saint is, and that led to why we don't celebrate saints' lives in our church, but yes Grandma Lizzy's church has saints in it. And true to my parenting style thus far, I over explained everything.
Bridget has had a rougher time with the whole Santa thing, starting at age four, when I had the genius idea to put "reindeer" poop on our deck. I'm a creative, imaginative person and I want to foster that sense of wonderment in my children. Sometimes things backfire a wee, little bit. A co-worker of mine had llamas and another co-worker of mine would ask for a little baggie of poo to leave around their house as evidence of Santa's nightly visit. She had been acquiring llama excrement for several years now and her kids where thoroughly surprised and excited each Christmas. They would even leave carrots for the reindeer along with cookies for Santa. I asked the llama-owning co-worker to make a baggie for me to surprise my kids. It felt like a weird drug-deal. I met her at work in the parking lot, looking over my shoulder and fidgeting a lot, grabbed my zip lock baggie of feces, asked about storage and spreading procedures (I had two days to go with a bag o'poo that I really didn't want my four and two year old to find). Llama poo, for those curious about it, isn't very big, about the size of a date (like the noun version of the word, not the verb). I had a sandwich size bag of it nicely stored in my garage. On Christmas Eve night, after I had read "The Night Before Christmas" (an annual tradition that at ages 15 and 13 they still beg me to read), Tom and I, well me, since Tom thought the reindeer proof was weird and doomed to failure, donned the plastic gloves and dropped poop around the deck of the house. I went to bed, but hardly slept, the anticipation of excited children hung in the air making sleep impossible. At precisely 5:30am, my little ones woke up to a tree so full that it vomited presents. They checked to see if Santa ate his cookies and if the reindeer ate any of the carrots they left out. This was turning out to be a mighty fine Christmas. I encouraged Bridget to look on the deck, and she spied the reindeer surprise. Her eyes got wide and I exclaimed, "look Santa's reindeer pooped on our deck! Santa was really here!" Her little face got red and she put her hands on her hips and said "oh great mom! How could Santa let his reindeer poop on our deck and not clean it up? This is terrible!" She was horrified, but not nearly as horrified as I was that my four-year was quite indigent over the poop. Tom later pulled my side, thankful he didn't "I told you so," but thought it might have been better if we had used black licorice or something other than actual poo, because now we'd have to clean this up. I was still stunned that Bridget didn't find the whole thing endearing, but was mortified and still scarred by the whole experience eleven years later. I did have the privilege of further adding to her therapy bill concerning Santa.
So, Bridget has only written one letter to Santa, and Tucker, after seeing the result of thus-said letter has skipped on the opportunity ever since. She was seven years old and we had just moved from Kirkland back to Blaine. Tom took a huge pay-cut when we moved making that Christmas a bit tight. At his previous place of employment, Tom would get an extra paycheck as a Christmas bonus and he would go hog-wild with the presents. Tom and I were still trying to make ends meet after moving four months earlier. Bridget decided to make things easier for us by going directly to Santa himself for her gift needs. It was a nice letter, very polite. She asked how he was doing and then informed him that she would like a Nintendo DS. That was all she asked for. In 2004, a Nintendo DS was ridiculously expensive, and there was no way Tom and I could afford such a gift for one kid. I didn't want the kids to worry about Christmas and all that good stuff, so I, in my infinite wisdom decided to head off this DS thing as quickly as possible, but still trying to maintain that wonderment thing I previously mentioned. I pulled Bridget aside that next morning in all seriousness (Bridget had me proofread her Santa letter before she had me send it off) and told her about what I had heard last night on the news. I informed her that Santa's elves were on strike. They were demanding health care benefits, more time off and extra pay since they work all year and only get one day off. They wanted to unionize but Santa wont let them. I would like to mention here that Bridget at age seven (and now) has always been a bit political and enjoys the news. She gave me that I-don't-believe-you-because-you-seem-to-enjoy-messing-with-me-90%-of-the-time look and asks why hasn't the morning local news reported on this new development at the North Pole. Dang. Wasn't expecting the seven-year-old to come up with that one. I quickly recovered with I heard it briefly on CNN and Santa can't get you a DS because he spending so much money on attorney fees and he had to hire a PR firm to keep the elves unionization out of the media. I think she finally believed me, because she asked me all kinds of questions on why wouldn't Santa want to give the elves health care and it isn't fair that they work all year around and Santa only works one night, somehow this led to illegal immigration and child sweatshops in Indonesia. I'm not sure how much of this creative lying has affected my kids, they seem pretty normal. Bridget is home-schooled, so maybe not that normal. Well, there you have it. Arneson antics revealed for all. Okay, not all our antics. Just the Christmas ones. I still have plenty of stories on my awesome parenting tactics to blog about :)
