A belated Christmas story on the last day of the year.
Last year, Alex asked lots of questions about Santa. He was on the verge of putting everything together and realizing The Truth. Molly answered one of his questions with, “Well, only people who believe in Santa get presents,” and that was the last we heard of it last year.
Fast forward to this year: Alex still asked no questions about Santa. This disappointed me; I wanted an otherwise bright and inquisitive third grader to start seeing through the holes in our story.
Because we flew to Minnesota on Christmas morning, Santa came to our house Christmas Eve while we were at church. Did the kids seem at all suspicious that Santa would organize his schedule on his busiest day around the two hour window we’d be out of the house? Of course not.
Here’s how it worked. Molly & the kids went to church early to get seats. Conveniently, I still needed to take a shower, so I’d join them later. The ruse gave me the time to move the presents up from the basement before joining them. Easy peasy.
Little did we know, Alex was still wondering about Santa, but he came to the wrong conclusion. On the walk to church, Alex told Molly, “Santa has to be real. The presents are coming when both parents are at church, so it can’t be you.” That’s right: At the very moment I was putting presents under the tree, while he was walking with just one of his parents to church, Alex concluded we couldn’t be the ones behind it all.
Later, while we were sitting at Mass, Alex even remarked to me, “You sure take long showers.” But no more questions.
We see want we want to see. We believe what we want to believe.
