Just Thinkin' ...on believing

This House Believes

As of the day after Thanksgiving - officially known as ‘Decorating Day' in our house - this sign hangs down in the center of our fireplace, with three stockings to the left of it, and four to the right (symmetry being difficult in a house of seven).

This year, the sign has imparted a premature, nostalgic feeling that hits me here and there, at odd times and places including the line at Dunkin Donuts, when the Chief waved me into Swallow Union last Wednesday, and this morning, after getting the call that Groton-Dunstable had cancelled school due to the first snow storm of the season.

My youngest child, my little boy, is in the midst of his last Christmas season as a true believer in Santa Claus.

I sit here with a sad smile on my face, but I know my eyes are glittering with the knowledge that John and I have managed a spectacularly impressive run of magic over the young man's nine years.

Yep. Nine years.

He's in fourth grade. Nobody seems to believe for that long any more.

For better or worse, his father and I must be two of the best twisters of truth on the planet, though I choose to see it in a different way.

We have spent not only his nine years, but a total of fifteen years (plus!) as the keepers and distributors of magical beliefs in our house.

I take my role in this effort extremely seriously.

It is one of my most important jobs.

Think about it. What better gift to give your children than magic in their lives? It's a real value, too! Doesn't cost a thing. I'm thinking that leaving my kids with memories of magic experienced - and a good foundation for paying those experiences forward - is way more valuable thing to pass down than a good, silver chafing dish (which I don't have, but sounded like a really good example of something that would be passed down from a distant great, great, great (times three or four) grandmother.

So let's get right down to it. Magic. Make some. Not a card trick that elicits a one time "wow", but an idea or a story or an action that sparks that sense of wonder we have as children and then chase our entire lives after that.

Real magic.

Okay, so here's the biggest hint for success: You must to create a home that allows for hints of magic throughout the entire year, if you are going to pull it off for the Big Show - Christmas.

For instance, from the time my daughter Mackenzie built her required Leprechaun trap in second grade at Swallow Union, we have had major league trouble in our house on the morning of March 17^th every single year. I'm serious; the kids have to get up really early because we have to put the house back together before the bus comes. That darned Leprechaun manages to get into the house every single year. He turns over tables, knocks over glasses, and leaves nasty notes on the fridge. One year he even managed to put every single chair on top of the kitchen table, with every single special stuffed animal in the house seated in them as if patiently awaiting breakfast! We all curse that darned little man dressed in green as we clean up spills and upend tables and check for footprints in any left over March snow (last year there were little teeny footprints all over our front porch, stairs, and into the lawn, and there they just...disappeared. Go figure.).

On Easter, the kids still wait in their rooms and call out "Can we come down yet?!" to which we answer in exasperating ways that they cannot come down for a really, really, long time because we are not sure if the Bunny has come (which really means we haven't made coffee yet). On their way downstairs, they see multicolored sweets peeking out of painstakingly identified hiding places. They have to come down and get their empty baskets, and wait for us to yell, "GO!" (It's agonizing...you'd have to see their faces and hear their pleas (I'm serious! Even Sam - age 13 - and Mackenzie - now 15 - are still in a state of torture as they wait). At ‘go', they are allowed to scour the house to find approximately six hundred (nope, not exaggerating) pieces of candy, all hidden around the house, from the tops of picture frames, to the pots of plants, to light switches (balancing is key in hiding them there), to door hinges. It's a blast. Even more excitement ensues when someone find a stale Tootsie Roll, still balancing on a door jam, the following November! Oh, and did you know that - since Santa knows the Easter Bunny - sometimes when there is a toy the elves don't have time to make for December delivery (read here, a toy that is THE toy of the season that your cherub remembers to ask for on the morning of December 24^th and is available only on e-Bay for the bargain basement price of $1,100 and climbing), the Easter Bunny will drop it off in March or April when he hops around to your house? Yep. True thing there. Just let Santa know about it in a Christmas Eve letter and he'll make sure it happens. You don't even need to register, or give your social security number, or anything. It's a free service to us all. I've used it once or twice myself.

The tooth fairy is a riot. That lady (absolute, unanimous agreement that the tooth fairy is a ‘she' in our house) is amazingly fun. Did you know that you can write a note requesting your tooth be left - along with your money - and she will honor the request (because she is very selfless)? Did you know she is very tricky? She sure is. My kids have found that she leaves the money in all sorts of whacky places, and she tends to be rather inconsistent with her currency. Once, one of the kids got $10 for one tooth. (We had no change in the house at all and no time to hit the bank, or Dunkin Donuts, to get some. The explanation was that she must have left the tooth castle with the wrong money. The kid bought it...go figure...and then even accepted the traditional dollar from that point on - inflation from the quarter I got when I was a kid.) In addition, every once and a while a child had to enlist the entire house to help search for the tooth loot because it was not where it was supposed to be (in the tooth "box" of course). It was at these times we found the booty in everything from shoes, to pillowcases, to under the rug (wherever we could slip it while we were "looking" for it, because we had forgotten all about that particular pre-bedtime chore the night before).

And then there's the Big Show...Christmas. Not for the faint of heart, nor to be attempted without practicing your magic-sprinkling abilities all year long, perhaps for years on end. (I hear there is an apprentice program that begins the day after you have your ‘Santa talk' with your own parents.).

First of all, there's establishing your decorating holiday. You can use mine. Day after Thanksgiving. Tell all your friends and family so they don't expect much from you that day. You must rise early, gather all decorating materials, every holiday videotape and/or DVD and/or CD you have, and you have to be jolly and happy all day (holiday pajamas help...it's hard to not be jolly when wearing reindeer covered flannel pj's). Then there's the importance of setting the household emotional thermostat at the right temperature (‘super high' will do from December 1 - 18, but ‘feverish' will be necessary for December 19 - 25) - an advent calendar helps (though it comes with it's own drawbacks - see the ‘Just Thinkin' column on Advent Calendars from last year). In addition there's the constant stream of flat out lies necessarily delivered with the consistency only possible if you are a MENSA candidate (I am not, and have been caught piling lie upon lie when cornered, but this has worked for me and may work for you, too.) Remember, you are not only protecting your household magic from the world of adult scrooge types, but even more difficult are the puny elementary-school-aged scrooges bent on convincing your little cherubs that their parents have been lying to them through years of magical holiday bliss. (Okay, technically, these little rugrats might be right, but this isn't traffic court - intent matters. And in the realm of magical childhoods, anything goes.)

And this brings me back to the beginning, and I am literally looking at my sign over the fireplace right now (between keystrokes of course. One should not type and read at the same time. It's dangerous).

This House Believes

Sigh.

I mentioned my feelings to my fifteen-year-old daughter - how sort of sad I was that this is surely her little brother Gabe's last Christmas really believing in the magic.

And she gave me my first Christmas present of the season.

She said (in all seriousness), "Geez, Mom. You cry when Tinkerbell flies from Cinderella's castle before the (Disney World) fireworks start. You get all excited every time you even SEE fireworks! You are ridiculous on Decorating Day and cry at the end of Home Alone every time. You have more fun MAKING the magic than getting it." And then she said, "You believe more than anyone."

She was right on all counts. I do cry when Tinkerbell flies. I tear up at fireworks (and get goose bumps too). I cry at the end of Home Alone (and the Grinch, Rudolf, Miracle on 34^th and It's a Wonderful Life to boot). Hearing ‘The Little Drummer Boy" and "O Holy Night" sung well (say, by Josh Grobin, Celine Dion, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) can bring on the waterworks. And even now, the story of the Three Wise Men and that Star over a manager where a couple alone welcomed their newborn son makes me weepy, even though I lapsed in my religious beliefs long ago.

Soon, my son Gabe will join the special ranks as a sprinkler of magic, rather than a sprinkl-ee. Having been both, I really don't know which role I've enjoyed more.

So I look back at my little sign, and smile a little wider.

This House Believes.

Merry Christmas, and thanks for readin'

Lisa