Uh oh

So my "Christmas of Gratitude" was lost. Literally. I typed them all and tried to post day by day. And they we're erased. I don't know. Call it fate. Or whatever. All I know is this, I'm thankful, so very thankful for everyone who has touched my life in some way. So thank you. And now? I'm posting an article from www.Damomma.com . She posted it last year and had requests to re-post this year. Enjoy.


Repost: How I came to Believe in Santa
December 22nd, 2008
I’ve had a couple of requests to repost this entry from last year.
– EBS
How I Came to Believe In SantaPosted by DaMommaDecember 7, 2007
It has become fashionable for parents not to encourage their children’s belief in Santa. Call me hip, call me cutting edge: I grew up not Believing.
My Dad was literal and honest with us about everything, and felt that Santa was a cruel joke to play on kids. I was in my teens before I realized there were people who actually Believed in Santa.
I wrote a paper for a college theology class in which I argued that God existed because people believed in him. I called it, “Yes Virginia, there is a God.” I got an A.
I grew up literal and honest about everything.
“Don’t you feel badly tricking them?” I asked Emily when Mary was finally old enough that some sort of Santa Policy had to be made. Cute Husband desperately wanted her to Believe and I was asking mothers I respected for advice.
“Oh, I think if I felt like I were tricking them I would feel badly,” Emily said.
(”Yeah, but, you’re telling them a fat guy in a red suit pops down their chimny and drops off a bunch of presents. I mean. Come on.”)
“Here’s the thing –” she said. “After it’s all done, after I’ve wrapped everything, set it up and I stand there looking at it before I stagger to bed … I Believe.”
Right, she’s Believing away while she’s chomping on cookies her kids made for the fat guy.
I totally understand how my Jewish friends shake their heads in perplexity at the tradition of buying piles of presents for kids and pretending someone else — some stranger with an eating disorder and a questionable relationship with elves — brought them down the chimney.
The Hannukah tradition is so much more sensible. Family. Brings presents. Happy Hannukah.
And then one Christmas my friend Angela told me a story of when she was an elementary school teacher in Stafford, Virginia. Every Christmas Angela and her co-workers identified families who might be having trouble making Christmas happen, pooled their money and helped to buy presents for them.
Angela was coming down the hallway on the last day of school when she found a little girl crying on the steps.
“Santa’s not coming to our house this year,” she said. “My mother says it’s because we don’t have money, but I know it’s because I wasn’t a good girl.”
The little girl wasn’t one of the children Angela and her friends had identified, but her situation turned out to easily be the worst. The girl and her brother, mother and grandmother were struggling to survive, much less have Christmas.
Angela called her husband, a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant stationed in Okinawa, Japan.
“I feel so bad,” she told him. “What do we do?”
“Get the family’s name and address,” he told her. “And the ages of everyone in the house. I’ll see what I can do.”
From Japan, Angela’s husband called back to the Marine Corps base at Quantico. The following afternoon, Christmas Eve day, the little girl from Angela’s school was playing in her house when there was a knock at the door. Her mother opened it to find two young Marines in dress blue uniform.
While her mother stared in astonishment, the Marines began to move boxes of things into the house — food, gifts for everyone, and a tree.
The 20 year-old Corporal — stationed away from his own family (he would have dinner at Angela’s the following night) — stopped to speak to the little girl.
“Santa was worried he might not make it to your house this year,” he said. “So he called in the Marines and asked us to help out. He said to tell you you were a very good little girl and he was proud of you.”
“That’s Santa,” Angela said simply. How could anyone not Believe after that?
“Okay, girls, pick something awesome. Pick something great,” I say at the mall toy store. We’ve done it every year, even years when we couldn’t buy anything for our own children and had to rely on family to do it for us.
Because even in those years, we knew we had it good.
“It has to be good,” I say. Something you really want for yourself — something that will hurt a little to give up. Mare choses an exquisitely-dressed ballerina Barbie. Renny, a Dora doll. I pay and walk them over to the Marine in dress blues at the Toys for Tots table.
“Okay. Please give them to the Lance Corporal.”
They turn them over — Renny a little less than graciously. But it’s Mare who really hesitates as she passes that ballerina doll over the counter.
“You help Santa, right?” Mare asks, dark blue gazed fixed on the young Lance Corporal.
“Sure do,” he says, eyes flickering to me. I nod.
“Will you tell the girl who gets this: ‘Merry Christmas from Mary?’ — And I hope she has a good Christmas and that I am sorry her family doesn’t have enough money?”
“Baby,” I say before he can answer. “He can’t do that. Santa will give this to parents who can’t afford gifts for their children, and they will give it to their little girl. It’s not from you. It’s from Santa.”
You have to give it up for zero reward. You can think of that girl in your heart, but you can’t ever ask her to thank you. After all, you didn’t really do anything except grow up privileged enough to be able to do this.
I never say “Him” when I talk about Santa. I don’t answer questions about sleighs or reindeer — I read the girls the stories not as literal truths, but as allegories of the magic that really does exist.
I get what Emily meant.
Christmas Eve when it’s all done and I look at the magic of lights and the quiet peace of joy and comfort we can provide, I will truly in my heart Believe. When my kids squeal and open presents in the predawn living room I’ll be thinking of that Dora doll and the ballerina, and hoping those kids Believe, too.

-Damomma