In accordance with my previous post, I just blazed a trail two hours north in preparation for my nephew's surgery. It's closing in on midnight, and I made the last minute decision to leave the family behind and head up before Christmas Eve. After all, tomorrow is a very pivotal day for this little guy. There will be hours upon hours of surgery to remove a mass that everyone is hoping is benign. I brought all of Christmas with me -- the packages I've wrapped for the family, the stockings for the kids and me, a little bit of this and that from Santa, some pajamas and some workout clothes. I left the dog, the husband, and the children behind to all caravan up on Christmas Eve. It's better this way. I can hide what Santa has left.
Speaking of the jolly old fellow, I'm not sure how much longer the Santa magic will continue. I volunteered last week in my 10-year-old's classroom and all of the talk was about how Santa was just plain made up. To make matters worse, movies make reference to the belief or non-belief in Santa. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention before, but the lack of belief seems to be everywhere.
Beyond Santa, we have one of those Christmas elves -- an "Elf on the Shelf." Somehow I've made it through the entire holiday season without forgetting to move him nightly to a new spot to "peek in" on the kids during the day. The kids left this evening to be with their father, so our elf is hanging now from the Christmas star, just waiting it out for the next few days to fly on back to Santa for the rest of the year.
To be honest, this year it's a stand-in Elf. When my ex and I separated, I bought an elf for the house I'm renting. The kids named her Holly. Unfortunately, Holly went missing this past year. I think at some point I ran into her and must've thrown her into some elusive cabinet. She'll show up, I'm sure -- probably around Easter when I'm hunting down last year's plastic eggs and Easter baskets. So before the kids arrived back from their Georgia holiday with Daddy, I made an emergency elf replacement trip. The price of an elf has risen quicker than the rate of inflation. So there are two elves in our house; one of which is hanging out in plain sight while the other is perhaps doing other elf-like mischievous things.
Elves or Santa, I'm not ready to part with these sweet holiday traditions -- even if it means I'm lying to my children about their existence.
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