Practical Santa

For the past two years we haven't "done" Santa at our house (and I know that some of you and your perverted minds "went there", but by saying "done" I did NOT mean that we had intimate relations with Santa - I meant that we hadn't bothered to play Santa) because of my med and alcohol withdrawal and the stress of everything else in our house. We just didn't see the point in spending money on gifts that we didn't even get the credit for, for kids who didn't really appreciate how much work it was anyway. Besides - my kids have known for years that Santa is actually the Easter Bunny in disguise and we just didn't feel the need to keep lying to them about him living with a bunch of shorties in arctic temperatures.

Well - a few days after Thanksgiving I mentioned that we needed to get the tree up. Derek hates the Christmas tree that we have. It's one of those were you have to figure out what color the microscopic piece of tape wrapped around each branch is so that you can push the square end of the branch into the corresponding round hole on the base. We have yet to get through the erection (yes - I said erection - stop giggling like a 12 year old) of the tree without him cussing, throwing limbs, and swearing that we are going to buy another tree. Putting up the tree is an all day affair (I said affair too - man I am quite the potty mouth today) and there really isn't much of it that is pleasant for anybody. Especially Derek ... and anybody standing within throwing distance of those branches.

As I am talking to Derek about when he is going to get the tree up (we had decided a few years ago that it is best for him to do this when nobody else is at home), Bryce chimes in and says "I don't know why we put the tree up anyway. We never even have any presents under it.". I instantly teared up. It was like he had slapped me in the face. It really did hurt my feelings and all the sudden I felt like a horrible mother because we were no long wrapping presents for our kids. We let them pick out some clothes and give them some money, but nothing is a surprise to them anymore. So me in my limited intelligence decides that we are going to reinstate Santa this year. Why ? Well because I want to see their wittle glowing faces when they unwrap the presents that "Santa" brought them on Christmas morning. Or maybe it's because part of my brain is fried from all of the years of prescription med abuse and drinking vodka by the gallon. I am going to go with the brain damage theory because so far this has not been much fun.

So do you think that the kids would hate me forever if Santa just gave them practical gifts? Socks for everybody. Boxes of hot chocolate. Some tubes of toothpaste. Shampoo always makes a great gift ! Somebody can get a ham. Somebody else can open individually wrapped potatoes. What about some green beans? I could just wrap up the entire Christmas meal and we could take it straight from under the Christmas tree to the oven. What a great plan ! No ? Fine then - I will keep spending my lunch breaks looking for crap that I can't find anywhere because the electronics that they want were already bought up by better mothers than me. Ah - Christmas time !