It's hard to believe Christmas week is here! Are you ready?
I can see you all shaking your heads "NO" with me. Of course you're not ready. I mean come on, before you read my blog you were probably online trying to find places that can guarantee next day shipping for a gift you forgot to get!
I'm still not ready...in fact after I finish this blog I have yet another night of wrapping ahead of me. Well that is unless I run out of Scotch tape for the 100th time this month. Can they not invent a larger roll of tape? Seriously?
As Moms we're never ready for Christmas. We stop the crazy holiday chaos simply when we run out of time to do anything else. I, like many Moms, get so caught up in the details of Christmas I start to resemble that guy from the old Dunkin Donuts commercials...time to send the christmas cards....time to get ready for a christmas concert....time to wrap the presents...time for the office christmas party...time for christmas baking...time to pick out presents for teachers. Between trying to schedule christmas pictures at a time that none of the children are sick, to fighting for parking spaces at the mall...Christmas is just plain exhausting. I feel like a chicken with my head cut off most of December.
In the midst of the Christmas chaos, I can't help but miss the holidays when I was young. Christmas was amazing when I was a kid. The reason was plain and simple...My Mom. My Mom has more Christmas spirit than anyone I know. She IS Christmas to me. My Mom starts decorating the day after Halloween and wears nothing but red and green for about two months straight. Not only did Santa bring us mountains of presents, but he made scavenger hunts for us to go on Christmas morning. I can close my eyes and still hear John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Together in the background while we drove to pick out a fresh Christmas tree. I can still see the Bubble lights (where did those ever go by the way) and ornaments on our tree. We won so many contests for Christmas lights (think Griswolds), they eventually told us we couldn't enter anymore. My Mom always did everything she could to make Christmas a magical time.
But as I grew older...I lost the magic of Christmas.
Well...that is of course until I had children.
This year marks the first year my children are actually really into Christmas. Sure they've always enjoyed it, but now they are at the age where they (well except L) understand Santa Claus.
Last week, my cousin recommended I check out Portable North Pole (http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/). For those of you who don't know, PNP is a website where you can design a video for your children of Santa talking to them. Santa says your child's name, looks in their file (that has pictures of them in it) and knows personal details about their life. So one night while my children were playing, I made their videos.
Later that night I logged on to our email and exclaimed: "Ooh, J and H come here...Santa emailed you". I then played each of the video for my children.
What happened next will live in my memory forever. My daughter, 4 years old, went absolutely crazy! She could not get over that Santa was talking to her! She screamed with excitement at such a level I could hardly understand her...
"Mommy, he knows my name!! Mommy, he knows where I live! Mommy he said he's coming to see me".
My son, H, watched his video. He tipped his head to the side at times and didn't make eye contact with the computer, completely shy. Although he didn't reach the decibels his sister did, I could see in his eyes the reality that Santa was REAL.
In the span of 10 minutes, I forgot about Christmas lists, mounting Christmas expenses, parties, cards, family drama etc. and just basked in the glow of true Christmas Spirit. I was brought back to my childhood.
So, yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...and now apparently he is cutting edge with emails and videos! Thankfully, the magic and wonder of Christmas still exists and we can relive it everytime we look in our children's eyes.
Mandi
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