Believers and True Believers

I’m debating on whether it’s worth having a Christmas list. I ask for the same thing every year. I want a picture of my kids on Santa’s lap. I recognize that life speeds past us faster than we can wrap our minds around it and I want the innocence of Christmas to be documented somehow. And I figure that as long as I can get my kids to sit on Santa’s lap that they are somehow still believers and the years of believing are my favorite. My eldest has long since abandoned Santa’s ample lap. He’d rather have me yell “I love you,” from the car window as I drop him at school than visit with Santa. And, believe me, he’d melt into the pavement if I so much as acknowledged that he was my son verbally while on school property. Which is why I love looking at my photos, first of when he’d willingly sit on Santa’s lap to the phase-out years when he would lean in to be in the picture with his siblings, but conveniently forget his wish list.


The only problem with my preferred gift is that it isn’t easy to give me. At least not as easy as purchasing the sweater that I always have to return or the bubble bath that I will never use because I don’t have time for baths. So I usually wind up working myself into a sweat in order to help them give me the picture. This includes making them dress up and dragging my often Grinchy family to a holiday event where we can stand in a long line waiting to see Santa for 30 seconds while his voluptuous elf snaps a picture. While waiting for the picture to print, I have to endure another comment from my husband about how I need a “helper elf” costume. I’m pretty sure the real Santa wouldn’t still be married to jolly Mrs. Claus if all the elves looked like that.

I’ve considering just bagging the actual memory and boning up on my Photoshop skills. I could just cut and paste their heads on top of child model bodies. I practically had to do that for a Christmas card a few years back anyways. My kids wouldn’t look at the camera all at the same time, so I finally just pasted on my daughter’s head. It was a hack job, but I don’t think anyone noticed. Still, I think I’d miss the actual event. I can still remember the year when my son refused to stand in the Santa picture. It was heartbreaking. I remember going home and crying thinking, “really, it’s happened already?” I wasn’t prepared—just like I wasn’t prepared to hear his school counselor discuss his college plans as she scheduled his classes for his freshman year. But I was glad that I was there for that moment just the same.

I figure that I have a few more “believer” years left. They always bring life into our holiday and I love them almost as much as the “true believer” years. That’s when they becoming the givers and we get some of our best Christmases as we shop and drop for a needy family. The smile on your child’s face as they hop into the car, barely missing being caught by the unsuspecting family, is the moment when you realize that you weren’t such a bad parent after all.