A day late for St. Nicholas, but that's what I spent his day doing: pulling out, setting out all the little St. Nicholas/Santa/Father Christmas figurines.
Cue the yearly discourse about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus, which makes me glad my children are grown up. I feel I have narrowly missed a whole juggernaut of anxiety about parenting, and how to handle Christmas is one aspect of that infinitely-faceted all-encompassing weather of parental dread.
What we did in our house:
*Yes, Santa Claus. Santa Claus had been part of our family cultures growing up and was the language our children's grandparents spoke about Christmas gift-giving. What is Sanny Claus bringing you should not be a weird or traumatizing question, we thought, especially given that it was going to be inevitable. In fact, in the beginning, I'm not sure we thought about this as problematic for even one nanosecond. So, from the time our first child was born, yes, we did a Santa Claus gift (ONE) and stockings, every year. As a child, you went to bed at night, and the stockings were empty, and there was nothing for you on the hearth. When you woke up, there was something where nothing had been before. This was magic, even when you were old enough to know your parents were cooperating in it.
*Being in England for our oldest children's formative years helped a lot, because "Father Christmas" was subtly different, and really more like what we'd been thinking to begin with. We read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and that Father Christmas really began to fill our family imagination as what we meant by the secret gift-giving on Christmas. It was a way of saying, "Aslan is on the move."
*We did St. Nicholas long before we were Catholic: shoes out, clementines and chocolate in them. It was never a major gift-giving holiday for us. No books, no pajamas, no alt-Christmas experience going on. But we had done it ever since our oldest was very small.
*We also read about Christmas gift-givers in other cultures: the Tomten in Sweden, for example, or the Magi bringing gifts on Epiphany. What we could see was that all over the world, the idea of gifts connected with the coming of the Christ child was always a thing that happened --- and why? Because we wanted to remember, especially, God's vast generosity and desire to give, even unto the gift of Himself, to all of us. So in a sense it didn't matter what name we used to talk about that: ultimately it was always God, and He had many servants.
*So we just didn't get bunged about this. Our gift-giving was never all that extravagant, not so much for reasons of character as because when our children were growing up, we were mostly really broke. They had grandparents who were extravagant, which was nice. But Santa always had a budget, which we sometimes had to explain.
*Our children certainly may have legitimate complaints about aspects of their upbringing. They've been overwhelmingly gracious about our various mistakes, and I'm grateful for that. But I don't think anybody holds any grudges about being "lied to" at Christmas. For what it's worth, we never had any big moment when we told them "the truth," either. My parents never did this with me. There was never a moment when I was required not to enter into the magic of what I eventually knew was a game. Obviously I figured it out, but I still liked, even as a teenager, pretending that I hadn't. I think telling them, at some age when you deem them "old enough" is like saying, "You don't get to play anymore. Welcome to the adult world of no magic."
*Now I just assign everybody to bring some tiny stocking stuffer for everybody else at Christmas, so that I don't have to worry about stockings on top of everything else. What's miraculous to me is that everybody seems to manage to sneak their things into stockings unseen, even in a house full of people where their father and I are the only people who go to bed at anything like a reasonable time. And it's fun. It's everybody getting to be creatively a little generous, in a secret way. Of course, certain of my cheeky offspring said to me, "Mother! Are you telling me there's no SANTA?" I said, "No, I'm just telling you that these days he looks a lot like you."
Wearing today:
Wool& Maggie over my Icebreaker long-sleeved tee, with thrifted bamboo leggings, Boody socks, Xero Tari boots.
I had my doubts about this outfit when I put it on, but I think I like it. Of all my dresses, my Maggie is the one I'm most ambivalent about, though in the main I love her --- I just think I should have gotten either a small long or a medium regular, the latter of which is probably what I'd go for if I bought another. I love Maggie in some guises, but she often feels like an awful lot of fabric, just as she comes.
Still, I think I'm happy with this.
I'm certainly comfortable. And I liked the look a lot better, oddly enough, when I put the socks on (and let them show), then the boots. Somehow that seemed to finish things the right way, though I couldn't really articulate why it feels right.
I sure am glad I have this Icebreaker tee in this color. It's made outfit after outfit for a whole month now, and is really coming into its own when I want to wear purple daily.
I'm warm without bulk in my clothes, feel soft and flexible and comfortable, and am, I guess, ready to venture out into the rain with Dora. Not wearing my Docs again today, because by the end of the day yesterday, my little toes were hurting (as in literally my little toes on the outside of each foot, especially my left one, which has the bunion). As much as I've loved them, I might really consider selling them. There's no point in keeping shoes that hurt my feet.
And now to walk the dog.
LATER:
Nice walk in the rain with the dog. I have her tethered to the couch, where she has finally soothed herself down and gone to sleep. My daughter has been tether-training her dogs, so that they don't tear up the house and leap about on the furniture, and my other daughter says it's a miracle. So we're back on that wagon, because I have work to do, and I can't have the dog either climbing on me or wailing all day in her crate.
AND finally sent my requests for day and time for my Homeschool Connections courses for next year, a whole two days ahead of the deadline. That's one more thing to strike off the to-do list!
Also uploaded my essaylet on Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe." I think that's the last of my part of the poems to run before Christmas. I still have to write on Shakespeare and Shelley for after Christmas, but that's only two left, a doable number, even if I'm going to lose tomorrow to this Abbey retreat.
ALSO:
I made a pumpkin pie last night, just because I felt like pumpkin pie. I used Swerve to sweeten it, and added two scoops of collagen powder for extra protein, but honestly, it's even better than the pie I made at Thanksgiving, which is good because it's what I've eaten for dinner, breakfast, and now lunch.
Now to ponder my talk for the aforementioned retreat . . .