July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Santa still making visits to his house (12/21/05)
Back in the Saddle
By By JACK RONALD-
Santa still comes to our house.
In fact, he’s never missed a year.
That’s what you expect when you’re a little kid, full of belief in the guy in the red suit. But at, say, age seven or thereabouts, when doubt has set in and is quickly destroying your trust, those annual visits are reassuring.
And when you’re older, becoming more skeptical and cynical by the day, it can be hard to keep the ritual going. The teen-age years can be especially rough, and if you don’t have a younger sibling you may see your Christmas stocking retired completely.
There was a Christmas, years ago, when my parents clearly thought it was time to put away the tradition as a relic of our childhoods. (They had a point. The youngest of us was in college.)
But the kids revolted.
Rather than give up hanging stockings each December, we bought stockings for our parents and added them to the mix.
It was a stroke of kid genius.
We’d successfully turned the tables on Mom and Dad. There was no way the stockings and Santa would be banished as long as our parents were in on the tradition.
For several years, one of the high points of Christmas shopping was getting funny, oddball, or intentionally goofy gifts to stuff into our parents’ stockings.
(Those folks who remember my mother and father would have been vastly amused to see them — particularly my father — puzzling over the silly things he found in their stockings on Christmas morning.)
It was only natural that when Connie and I became parents our stockings would join those of our children. And I’d like to think that in those early Santa-filled years, our kids took some comfort in knowing the guy at the North Pole had remembered Mom and Dad as well.
True, it gets tougher as they spread their own wings and move out of the nest.
Last weekend, we flew out to Boston for an early Christmas celebration with our twins. We had some great meals, some wonderful conversations, and an abundance of laughter. We even opened presents early so we could gauge reaction to gifts. But the Christmas stockings had to wait.
We could leave some items behind for “Santa’s helpers” to deposit on Christmas Eve.
But nothing can really happen until that night, because — trust me on this — Santa still comes to our house.[[In-content Ad]]
In fact, he’s never missed a year.
That’s what you expect when you’re a little kid, full of belief in the guy in the red suit. But at, say, age seven or thereabouts, when doubt has set in and is quickly destroying your trust, those annual visits are reassuring.
And when you’re older, becoming more skeptical and cynical by the day, it can be hard to keep the ritual going. The teen-age years can be especially rough, and if you don’t have a younger sibling you may see your Christmas stocking retired completely.
There was a Christmas, years ago, when my parents clearly thought it was time to put away the tradition as a relic of our childhoods. (They had a point. The youngest of us was in college.)
But the kids revolted.
Rather than give up hanging stockings each December, we bought stockings for our parents and added them to the mix.
It was a stroke of kid genius.
We’d successfully turned the tables on Mom and Dad. There was no way the stockings and Santa would be banished as long as our parents were in on the tradition.
For several years, one of the high points of Christmas shopping was getting funny, oddball, or intentionally goofy gifts to stuff into our parents’ stockings.
(Those folks who remember my mother and father would have been vastly amused to see them — particularly my father — puzzling over the silly things he found in their stockings on Christmas morning.)
It was only natural that when Connie and I became parents our stockings would join those of our children. And I’d like to think that in those early Santa-filled years, our kids took some comfort in knowing the guy at the North Pole had remembered Mom and Dad as well.
True, it gets tougher as they spread their own wings and move out of the nest.
Last weekend, we flew out to Boston for an early Christmas celebration with our twins. We had some great meals, some wonderful conversations, and an abundance of laughter. We even opened presents early so we could gauge reaction to gifts. But the Christmas stockings had to wait.
We could leave some items behind for “Santa’s helpers” to deposit on Christmas Eve.
But nothing can really happen until that night, because — trust me on this — Santa still comes to our house.[[In-content Ad]]
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