I loved reading all the comments on yesterday's post. Thanks to everyone who chimed in. More on the subject:
I agree with everyone who said that there's a pretty slim chance of a child being scarred by what they were told about Santa. I've never known anyone who was mad at their parents for letting them believe Santa was real. I also don't know any people who wish they had been told he was real. A friend emailed me today about yesterday's post and said a lot of really interesting things, including, "In the end, I think that it doesn't matter either way. No one seems especially traumatized one way or the other that I can tell. I can't think of anyone who hates their parents for how they handled it or who, as a result, has a lack of faith in other things or whatever. It just seems like some childhood thing that comes and goes with no damage." That's the theory at least. Anyone know anyone who feels Santa trauma?
Santa and I met in Turku, Finland back in 1998 while he was scraping ice off his car.
This same friend had this to say about Christmas gift giving:
"If we didn't buy presents for anyone over seventeen, it would solve lots of problems. Why do adults need to exchange gifts? Aren't we old enough to buy our own crap? If we could somehow only give each other presents when we have some thoughtful idea, without anyone getting their feelings hurt, that would be great. The forcing and expectation is what ruins things: especially when sometimes people say they don't want or need anything and they actually mean it and we get them something anyway. C and I make fun of the diamond commercials they run every year, when the TV tells you what diamond thing you're supposed to get your wife this year. If I ran Christmas, kids would get gifts and adults would get warm feelings."
I liked his ideas there, especially that last line. This friend and I were talking on the phone this afternoon about how the real fun at Christmas, once we're all grown up, is getting gifts for the kiddos. Last year, Abe had a bunch of stuff to open up just because we found it so fun to wrap things up for him and watch him open everything. We like to give kids gifts. That's just how it is. But it's easy when they're only a year old, like Abe was last year, and pretty much oblivious to what was going on. Now he's a wizened two, and we really don't want him to get sucked into the "I want, I want, I want" vortex. So I really liked the idea Christina had about the five gift tradition: something you need, something you want, something to wear, something to read, and something to share. I might even be inclined to make it even simpler. I like the idea of recycling gifts too (from thrift stores and hand-me-downs). My friend, in the same email, also wrote about what he thinks is the best holiday and why: "...That's why I'm currently thinking Halloween is the best holiday. There's a minimal effort and a large payoff. You get some costume (sometimes the cheaper the better) and buy a sack of candy and you're pretty much ready to go. You can decorate as much or as little as you want and no one will judge. It's more of a community thing than Christmas is. The movies are more fun. There's nothing cheesy or saccharine about Halloween: it's kinda hip actually. You're not hearing about it everywhere you go. No religion is involved (except for those who wrongly think there is). There are a variety of ways to celebrate. Kids can be kids and can be cute. No one is wanting to kill themselves. Satan's blessings are everywhere. Even Thanksgiving...is probably a better holiday--but in its case, only because of the promise of Christmas. You have some turkey dinner or whatever and see some family and you start getting excited about Christmas and pulling out Christmas records and thinking about shopping: but you're not sick of everything yet. You're not wanting to kill the next actor in the next Christmas commercial selling a Samsung Blu-Ray player. But then Black Friday hits and someone gets fatally trampled at Wal-Mart and the true spirit of Christmas comes alive."
Seven of the nine lined up Christmas morning, ready to open presents.
I get what he's saying (please, don't be offended by the comment about religion. And the "Satan's blessing" is a joke). I realized tonight though that I have all kinds of emotion attached to Christmas, like no other holiday. On my walk with Abe this afternoon, we walked past a house that was being decorated. The owners were playing Christmas music from the front porch, and as Abe and I sat there on their front steps talking about the decorations, I got all choked up. Tears welled up in my eyes from hearing some Christmas song playing; I don't even remember what it was. But my childhood appeared right in front, conjured by the music, the way it did when Max scratched his name on the side of his boat in Where the Wild Things Are.
I am very lucky that I had a happy childhood and bunches of happy Christmases. I bet there are a lot of people who didn't. For me though, probably because of all the happy memories attached to it (and not just because of the gifts), Christmas is still my favorite. My high school best friend's favorite holiday was Halloween, which I never really understood, maybe until now as it was just explained in my friend's email (not the same friend). It got me wondering what you all think the best holiday is and why? Anyone out there nutso for Valentine's or St. Paddy's Day?
Last year, this is what happened when Santa walked into the place where we were eating dinner: One year later, we met Santa at the Pioneer Courthouse Square tree lighting, and this happened: He's just nonplussed by the whole Santa situation. At least there's no more terror involved. This opens up a topic that I'd love comments on: how does your family handle Santa? We have thoughts on the matter but are unsure how to talk about it with Abe because we don't want him ruining anything for his friends. I'm trying to be purposefully vague here in case any young eyes are seeing this. We love Santa in the Rooney house but are not sure what we want our kids to believe about who brings them presents.
I've always liked the Slovak way: Jezisko (the baby Jesus) brings gifts on Christmas Eve after everyone has eaten the Christmas carp and potato salad. On December 6th, Mikulas (Santa) puts candies and fruit in the boots of children who leave them on their windowsills before going to bed. On December 5th (and sometimes on the 6th too), people will dress up as angels or devils to remind children the consequences of being good or bad. At the school where I taught for four years, one teenager would be a devil, another an angel, and another Mikulas. I recently found out that the angel costume was the old wedding dress of one of the middle-aged vice-principals. This revelation made me all kinds of happy and is a perfect example of why I loved living in Slovakia.
We're trying to figure out what works for our family without getting sucked into the traditions of the culture at-large. We have nothing against the culture-at-large necessarily. We just know how easy it is for kids to start expecting more and more at Christmas, and then we get sucked into the pressure to buy up all we can during the holidays, ending up with a bunch of junk that we'll never use.
I am torn. I like the idea behind Advent Conspiracy a lot. I also really like the idea of having at least something to open on Christmas morning. My parents never gave us anything hugely extravagant, but some of my best holiday memories involve the gifts we got, like the barbie house one year and the small black-and-white tv another. I remember these gifts. In Ted's family, all nine kids had to wait on the stairs until everyone was there and their mom could get a photo. Then and only then could they rush down the stairs to open gifts. This is one of the best collective Rooney memories, which wouldn't have happened if the opening of gifts were not involved.
So we're trying to find a balance. What does your family do at Christmas when it comes to gifts? Do you make your own? If you are participants in Advent Conspiracy, do your kids feel disappointed that they aren't getting many or any gifts? If you are one of those families with the mountain of boxes underneath the tree, what is your rationale for doing so (and I'm not judging--I'm always kind of jealous of you when I go to your holiday parties). Have any of you found a balance? If so, can you tell me how?
When we were growing up, my sister, cousins, and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. Granny's kitchen was one of our favorite places to be. She'd always let us sit on a counter, sometimes three of us at a time (we were five in all). She had endless patience and gave us tasks to do while we sat up there. In Granny's boxes of slide photographs, there are many pictures of us all lined up on her yellow kitchen counter.
Abe has discovered the joy of sitting on the counter in our kitchen. He started last year during the holidays, in this spot:Now that he's bigger, that counter gets crowded, so we've moved him across the room to this spot here, where he sometimes reads his Sunday comics. With all the cooking going on for Thanksgiving, he's especially loving this spot of his. He can easily reach the fruit bowl for more oranges. Our counter has room for more. If we can ever get our paperwork done, we're hoping for another hiney to sit on these counters with Abe. So where are we with all that second adoption stuff? We had a mad rush a couple of months ago getting the paperwork done, even a good chunk of what we need for our foreign dossier (the big daddy of all the piles of paperwork), but then we hit a snag with one paper. Even our Gladney caseworkers were sort of scratching their heads about what to do. Without going into the boring details, it has to do with how to get a proper " proof of employment letter" for an actor. Not so easy. Yes, we managed it the first time round, but now things are a little different, making things complicated (again, boring details).
We think we have a solution but it means waiting for another document. More waiting. Our goal is to have all our paperwork finished well before Christmas. I can't help feeling superstitious about our adoptions sometimes, as if I write or talk too much about it, I'm going to jinx it. Ridiculous, right?
So that's where we are. One paper away from putting our foreign dossier together. Then the big Wait. The wait for whom? More on that later (really, I promise).
A sunny day in November means yard work with dad. Wearing an old hat of mom's helps. Interesting timing after my post yesterday to find this article today. Thoughts? Check 1, 2, 3, is this thing still on?
At a party this weekend, someone I met was telling me about this mysterious guy he knew a little bit, a fellow regular at a bar he went to a lot in his '20s. The guy would sit in a corner by himself, drawing and reading. He always had a tab, which his family would pay. The person at the party who was telling me about him found out that I know the family who owns the bar and asked me to find out about the mystery-guy, if he was still living and doing okay.
Today, I ran into a member of the family who owns the bar, so I asked him about the artistic fella I'd heard about at the party. He told me that the guy is basically homeless and has spent the last fifteen years sleeping on the back porch of the bar. He's very artistic and intelligent, and his family is very wealthy. Oh, and you know what else?
"He's adopted. Yeah, all the kids in that family were adopted."
Nice. And what does this have to do with the story? What does his having been adopted have to do with anything?
I wouldn't say that I got mad. But I was certainly exasperated by the realization that so many people still have the misperception that anyone who was adopted is "damaged goods" somehow, that any problem they face in their life can be chalked up to their being adopted, that any difficulties their family goes through also is due to the adoption.
Sometimes I feel like our family exists in a bubble of wonderful, understanding, compassionate, open-hearted people who love us all unconditionally. I truly feel this way 99.9% of the time, so it's somewhat of a shocker when I encounter someone who is holding on tightly to antiquated ideas about what it means to be adopted. It's hard for me to just brush it off. I know I need to prepare our child(ren) for the times that they will have encounters like the one I had today (and in case anyone thinks I'm simply being too sensitive, the person I talked to today is the same one who once told me and another adoptive mom, out of the blue, that he "could never love an adopted child as much as my own." Well, thanks for letting us know. I shook off the shock of hearing the boneheaded comment and let him know what a good thing it is that he's not adopting then).
This is why I get so excited when I see stories like this one, and I want to know more. Isn't there a book out there about successful and famous adoptees? Does such a think exist? If not, I hereby copyright the idea.I would very much like to give this book to the bonehead I talked to today.
Abe has been calling me "Fozzie the bear" all day and wants me to call him "Kermit." Kermit does everything I ask him to do, with no complaints, as long as I call him by his proper name: Kermit. He responds by saying, "Thank you, Fozzie the Bear."
Later, he asks me, "Are you the biggest loser?"
"No, I'm Fozzie the Bear."
"Oh, okay."
Kermit ate his dinner while listening to Live Wire and then had a dance party to this song. It was a fun Saturday night.
Santa and I met in Turku, Finland back in 1998 while he was scraping ice off his car.
My friend, in the same email, also wrote about what he thinks is the best holiday and why:
Seven of the nine lined up Christmas morning, ready to open presents.
