What Happened?

Today is December 5^th. Christmas is 20 days away. Twenty days.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm in a full-fledged panic right about now - I haven't even started my Christmas shopping; heck, we're not even finished putting the decorations up around the house. There's folks coming in from out of town that have to be accomodated; we're being pressed into service to help Mom G. prepare the extravagant Christmas dinner; in short, there's about three months worth of work to be done and less than three weeks in which to do it.

It didn't used to be like this.

I remember being a kid, right around the age TheBoy is right now. Twenty days before Christmas my feet would barely be touching the ground. In less than three weeks the big day would be here; there would be presents and candy and I get to stay up late and omgiwonderifsantawillbringmeallthestuffiaskedfor... Plus we got like two weeks off from school, no homework, no responsibility for two whole weeks, nothing to do but relax.

Somewhere along the way, the magic turned into work. As we get older, and have more and more responsibilities thrust upon us, it becomes less and less about spending the holidays with family - and, G-d forbid, actually celebrating the real reason behind the season - and more and more about putting on appearances; going to the right parties, giving the perfect gift, getting everyone on an ever-growing list exactly what they want...

Having kids changes all that again. There's still a lot of work - heck, there's a lot more work involved, as Christmas now involves Christmas pageants, Cub Scout/Daisy "Holiday" parties, shopping for friends, Christmas traditions (like our latest one, the "Elf on the Shelf"), making sure we pick up a few toys for Toys for Tots and some winter clothes to drop off at the Salvation Army and the nine million other things that have to come together to make Christmas magical for our kids.

The magic does return. It returns in the face of my six year old daughter, smiling with glee as she writes down her Christmas list. It returns in the simple act of putting up the lights on the house - with my (almost) nine year old son standing by to "help", his first year as dad's helper with the lights. They're getting bigger and bigger; TheBoy is starting to ask uncomfortable questions (but has, at least for this year, decided to accept that Santa is real if for no other reason than the very capitalistic "I'll get more presents" reason... *g*). But for right now, they both believe. The Christmas magic is strong. And contagious.

When you have kids, it becomes abundantly clear that, yes, Santa is real.

That is all.