I love the Holiday Season, really I do.  I will point out that, while Christmas is the chosen Holiday of this particular household, I would probably be happy to celebrate any of the winter holidays; Solstice, Kwanza, Chaunnakah, you name it.  It really *feels* like a halfway point somehow, even though I live in a state where “the depths of winter” is used as more of a joke than an actual descriptor.  The kids have settled in to the routine of school, the days are shorter, forcing more quality time upon our postage-stamp of a house, the kids sleep better in winter (haven’t figured *that* one out yet) the da** cats come inside to escape the cold.  It starts out uncomfortable at first.  The cats fight for a week or so, establishing who gets which chair or gets to sit in front of which heater vent.  The kids do something similar, establishing elaborate rules regarding TV viewing, seating on the couch, which books are to be read on any given evening, who gets their cocoa first in the morning.  By Holiday time, however, all the new groundwork is established (for some reason this never happens in summer, by the way, only in winter) and everyone is settled in to the new way of doing things.

One entertaining element and inadvertant “teaching moment” for the kids is the run-up to the Holidays.  In those weeks after Halloween when the Xmas stuff starts to show up on the shelves, the adults in our little family are not permitted to “look” at the Xmas stuff (but the kids are) which leads to some serious entertainment when I have to be led past the Xmas aisles with my eyes shut by my 4 year old.  It becomes a game, “spot the Christmas” where the kids keep their eyes open and we go out of our way to avoid exposure, driving a different way to school in the morning because the mall had put its holly up early, shopping at different stores so I don’t have to wander around with my eyes shut.  After Thanksgiving, of course, all bets are off, but it’s become a lesson in personal responsibility for my kids.  Just because the retailers put the stuff out there doesn’t mean you *have* to buy in, that you are the one responsible, not the people who stock the shelves.  If we want to start Christmas after Thanksgiving, then that is our perogative, in fact, if we we wanted to start Christmas on Christmas Day, then run it up to January 6th?  That’s something we can do too.

I dunno if that will stick.  I suspect they will all hit that teenage point where they want to do everything just like their friends do, like the TV tells them to.  But we all go through that point in our lives, and sooner or later we come out the other end and start reestablishing ourselves. Our traditions, our histories, new ideas, new family come back together again and those bits and pieces from childhood start to reemerge.  I’m kindof hoping this is one of them.