Now that Christmas is fast approaching I find myself thinking about Christmas and what it means to me and what I want it to mean to Maya. I want Christmas to be about spending time with family and about giving rather than receiving.
I suddenly find myself wanting to purchase a Christmas tree for the family to decorate, whereas I previously had no such urge. I also find myself wanting to buy Maya gifts, whereas the previous two Christmases I wrapped things she already had. I didn't see the point of buying presents specifically to give her on Christmas day. Her first Christmas she was three months old and had no clue what was going on. The second Christmas she was fifteen months old and more interested in the people around her than opening gifts. This will be the first Christmas, at the age of twenty seven months, that she will enjoy opening gifts.
And now here comes a doozie... I actually don't want to have a "Santa" at Christmas time. It's not that I object to Santa (although I do feel that he is commercialised) and if other people want to introduce him to their children that's great. I just don't think Santa is necessary for instilling the Christmas spirit. And perhaps he even takes away from the Christmas spirit by placing a focus on receiving gifts rather than spending time with family. I think children would be just as happy receiving gifts from their parents.
However, not having Santa brings about a dilemma. Practically everyone else tells their children about Santa and if Maya doesn't believe how will this effect her and others. I imagine I won't be too popular with parents if Maya reveals to their children "but Santa isn't real". Also everyone will assume Maya believes in Santa and she will be bombarded with "What did Santa bring you?" and "Are you excited about Santa coming?".
I feel peer pressured to introduce Maya to Santa because everyone else does it. One thought Greg and I came up with is to tell her that Santa brings gifts to other children but we wanted to give her gifts from us. However, this might cause problems for Maya - why doesn't Santa bring her gifts?
I guess I'd like to create (with Greg and Maya of course) our own family Christmas traditions. But what does one do when the majority of the population around you follow traditions that you don't want as part of your own traditions?
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I got Katya Ella Fitzgerald “Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas” CD, because I was sick of her signing the chorus of Jingle Bells, which they learned at pre-school. It has “Santa Claus is coming to town” naughty or nice song. And we occasionally do say something about Santa putting presents into the stockings. At the same time she helped me buy and make some of the presents and wrap some up; and she’ll definitely know that her present was made by me. So I don’t think she’ll be thinking that presents under our tree are from Santa. We aren’t really providing any explanations to her at this point – she didn’t ask, doesn’t seem to be interested in who the present is from and more likely to get confused by any explanation we can come up with. She is mostly interested in having a big Christmas tree with pretty lights, creating decorations for it and knowing the answer to “Is this mine Christmas and will I get a present or is it for someone else?” (At the moment she equates all celebration to Birthday) She even made a present for herself (she collected the fabric off-cuts from my sewing project, put them into little pretty plastic bag, got Clive to help her wrap it up and put it under the tree) and you know, I suspect she’ll be as happy opening that one as the rest.
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