The Magic of Christmas

Hi, I’m Rachel, and I’m Ashlee. Welcome to the CapitalMOM Real Life Conversations.

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Our Mutual Dimmer

Let’s start with our dimmer. We actually have a mutual dimmer. My middle kiddo started throwing up yesterday, and then threw up until about 3:00 in the morning. And then I called Rachel to say, “Hey, we had a rough night. Our kids may not want to get together while we’re recording this episode.”

My kids usually go to her house while we record, and everyone’s so happy because they love being together, but Rachel’s youngest was also up almost all night throwing up and all day today.

Anyway, we’re both running on fumes from last night and all the laundry and cleaning today. I’m sure all you moms can feel this and hopefully this bug has long gone by the time you read this. Because it was one of those days where you wake up and are already ready for bed. I’ve been awake for 20 minutes, but already counting down.

There were moments when my daughter would gag, but my body was so tired. So I would turn and look and do the hand catch. I was too tired to grab a bucket. I got it. My mom instincts are on point.

Rachel’s November Glimmer

To add a glimmer, we put up our Christmas decorations yesterday. It’s amazing and brings me so much joy. We have a front room with a beautiful window, and my husband and I love driving home and seeing our tree lights in that window. But we have a second living room in the back, which is where we spend all of our time. So, this year, I really wanted a tree in our back room, too, to feel the magic everywhere in our house.

We found a flocked tree at Home Depot. I’ve always wanted a flocked tree. Like, forever, I’ve wanted one. It’s so beautiful, and I’m just so happy because now I have Christmas magic in both rooms.

Plus, John put lights up on the house today. He got the lights up before it got too cold. I’ll take this 60 degree November.

For sure! My son Brecken has his birthday party this weekend. Last year, it was this nice out, too, so we had it at our family’s cabin. So, about two months ago, he said he wanted to have it at the cabin again. I just remember saying, “Okay, buddy, but I can’t promise it’s going to be the way it was last year when it was so beautiful.” And now here we are, and it is.

Ashlee’s Childhood Christmas Traditions

We’re going to get into our topic this month—Christmas, specifically Santa. What did your childhood look like in terms of Santa? Was Santa a part of your Christmas?

Yes, Santa was a part of our Christmas, and my dad didn’t spend a lot of money or do very much, I would say, throughout the year as far as purchasing things for us. But when Christmas came, I feel like he always pulled out all the stops. Although he never stopped saying that it wasn’t Santa. Even when I was old enough to have thought things through, he would never admit to anything.

I know my mom obviously helped with that too. But for whatever reason, my dad really sticks in my memory for the Santa portion of it because I just loved how much he loved doing it. I learned later that was something that his parents did. They never, ever said that it wasn’t Santa. They just were always Santa believers and always Santa’s magic.

Our little routine was we had to milk the cows first, which sounds so funny. But I grew up on a dairy farm. We had breakfast, biscuits and gravy. Then, we cleaned all of the breakfast first. Only then could we line up, usually youngest to oldest, at the door to the family room. I was the youngest, so I got to go first and see Santa’s gifts by the stockings. It was always really magical.

What about you?

Rachel’s Childhood Christmas Traditions

Very similar. I was an only child, though. So there was no lining up. My day was more like getting up as early as I could, and I would go into my parents’ room and bug them.

My parents were always early risers, like 6:30 kind of people. And I would go in there and bounce on the bed and repeat, “Can we get up now? Can we get up now?” To which they said, “We have to wait until 6:00.” It was 4:30.

Once it hit 6:00, we would start with the stockings. Actually, a tradition that my grandma, my dad’s mom, did that I love that I’ve carried on with our kids is they took the stockings and fill them up, and then they actually set it on the foot of each kid’s bed so that when they wake up in the morning, they’re just sitting right there ready to open. That way, they can open them in their room and then come in and show us all the excitement. As a child, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and hear the jingle on the end of my bed. And it’d feel so magical and surprising, like “He arrived!”

Those little things that you pass on bring back joy from your own childhood when you do them with your own kids. It’s just so great.

After stockings, we opened one Santa gift. We never had the conversation or questioned Santa. We went along with it.

Holiday Traditions We Still Do

So then what did you take from your childhood that you now use with your kids, and is there anything you changed?

Obviously, we don’t milk the cows in the morning. We don’t do breakfast before we open presents. We’ve adjusted.

Part of it is because the kids have to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen. My childhood home could be closed off, but it can’t here. The biggest thing I’ve carried with me is the transformation that takes place overnight. I didn’t realize that tradition would stick with my kids as much as it has. It’s the same with birthdays or other holidays—that transformation gets them so excited.

For Rachel’s traditions, my kids write letters to Santa, and we do stockings at the end of their bed, of course. We have a gift from Santa next to the stockings, sometimes an occasional one under the tree.

Questions About Santa

We want to talk a little more about as our kids get older and they start asking questions about Santa—unlike us who just went along with it. Inevitably, I think some—or at least one—of our kids will ask at some point.

In fact, my oldest already has. She point blank asked, “Mommy, is Santa real?” And my response is always the same. I draw in her curiosity. I ask, “What do you think?” It always brings up a great conversation. Sometimes they want to share what they think more than they want to hear what an adult has to say, you know?

Even for questions like, “How would Santa get into our house?” or “How does Santa get all around the world in one night?” All those questions are really great questions. And getting their mind thinking, “Yeah, how would that work?” is actually a good thing.

It’s simple, too, because the answer is one of two things—there’s either a helper here or it’s magic. And it’s fun to believe in magic. It’s also totally okay if you don’t. And if you have a different person or a different figure that is Santa or represents that for them, that’s okay, too.

I know some families, for example, might not have enough money to buy a gift from mom and dad and from Santa. So for that reason, it might just be that they would rather take credit for the thought and hard work and money saved to give their children gifts rather than give the credit to somebody else that they don’t know.

Set Expectations

Ashlee has also had conversations with her kiddos asking questions. One of the reasons we ended up needing to have it was because I didn’t set very good expectations for what they could ask for. So that’s maybe a good little tip.

My oldest asked for a necklace that turns her into a mermaid and a fairy. Or can I have a real Pegasus? Or my daughter wants a real baby.

So, one Christmas I thought I could make a version of her necklace. So, I made a little chest and filled it with a blanket mermaid tail and a necklace that looked just like Sophia’s. When she opened her gift on Christmas Day, she was so disappointed and so sad. She said, “If Santa has all this magic, why can’t he share a little with me?” That broke me.

Another instance of setting expectations was about finances. We talk about that in our household. So, one time, my daughter asked, “Mom, you know best thing about Christmas? You can ask for anything, and it doesn’t cost any money! So if you want a boat, ask for a boat.” That’s when I knew I needed to set some limits.

The final reason we knew it was the right time to talk to our kids about this was because my middle daughter is a deep thinker. When she was two going on three, we were telling her Santa was going to come and drop off gifts and fill stockings. She could not go to bed that night because she was so afraid of a man breaking into the house. She was so afraid. A stranger was coming into our house at night while we’re sleeping. Total freak out. So that backfired, too.

Explain Santa as a Figure

So how did we have the conversation? My second child was very point blank and had a few cousins that are older that had talked. So when she asked, “Is this real or not?” we had a conversation about Santa as a figure.

Speaking about Santa as a figure, I had a couple quotes I wanted to read. “We believe Santa is a spirit of happiness and kindness. Santa isn’t one person anymore but a kind, loving feeling that comes from being together and doing kind things for each other.” This way, if you think about it more abstract, that’s one way that might resonate with kids.

Or you can even explain, “In the past, there was a real man named Saint Nicholas who lived in a place called Turkey hundreds of years ago. He delivered toys to children at Christmas time. Today, we celebrate the Spirit of Saint Nicholas, who we now call Santa, by giving generously at Christmas.”

Either approach takes the focus off Santa and recenters the act of giving and generosity and love and caring about people and showing that we care through gift giving.

Make Them Part of the Magic

So after that conversation and they know, what do you do? Instead of just saying, “Sorry, kid. You’re on your own. No more gifts for you. The magic is ruined now that you know the truth.” make them a part of the magic. So it feels like they’re in on the secret. You’re in on the fun.

Say things like, “I’d love for you to stay up with me tonight, and we can fill the stockings together, and we can set the gifts up together.” Then the magic is still there but in a new and exciting way where they’re a helper.

My oldest, who knows, still gets so excited about the fact that there’s going to be some magical transformation that happens overnight even though she knows I do it. She appreciates it.

Don’t Ruin Santa for Other Kids

So then, how do you navigate and have those conversations around other kids who still fully believe, and your kids might know more than they do, and you still want to be respectful of these other kids? Because I feel like it was the worst when you’re a kid and somebody’s like, “Santa is not real.” And you’re like, “Yes, he is!” Because then you’re starting to question and you’re self conscious about if you sound silly.

Basically, you don’t want to have a kid that’s ruining the magic for other kids. So to avoid that, we talked with our kiddos about how the magic is very real. So if someone says anything, we want to preserve that for them. Or we want to have their parents be the ones that have that conversation with them. That actually works for a few topics for us.

Super big props to Ashlee’s middle girl. Last year, Ashlee gave us a dollhouse secondhand that was hers. And we gave it to our youngest from Santa. So when her daughter came over and mine was showing it off to her, saying, “Anna, look at this dollhouse we got from Santa!” I can see Anna looking at me. She knows that’s her dollhouse. That’s not from Santa. I could just see her wheels turning.

I pulled her aside and said, “Anna, I know you know. And I know that this was yours. Thank you so much for not telling my girls because it’s magical, and it’s from Santa.”

After that, she was like, “I got you.” It was so cute and she loved being part of that secret.

How to Give the Feeling the Magic

To recap our list of ways to keep the magic alive for kids, we have:

1. Decide what your Santa story is as a family
2. Consider other families’ approaches and respect them
3. Navigate differences among peers
4. Have a conversation about Santa as a figure
5. Respond with empathy and be prepared to listen to whatever their response is when they learn
6. Focus on being together and understanding that Christmas magic is not all Santa

So much of Christmas magic is the memories that we make, like setting up the Christmas tree, making cookies, finding the Elf on the Shelf, seeing holiday lights, buying presents for people you love and delivering them, volunteering at soup kitchens or coat drives.

There are more ways to create the magic than just believing in Santa. Christmas is more than one thing. Ultimately, what we’re trying to hold onto even as our kids grow and maybe age out of these ideas, is realizing that the magic is still there.

It’s certainly still alive in us. We haven’t talked about our Santa experiences as kids with each other before, so it’s been fun to hear because I watched the way my friend responded and her eyes lit up when she started talking about her dad and her holiday traditions.

So many positive memories came from this time of year when we were children. Now that we’re parents, we want our kids to reflect back positively on these moments like we do. We never want them to feel like their parents lied to them their whole childhood. Even though it’s technically a lie, it’s done out of the goodness of our hearts, and all of the meaning behind it is from love, you know?

Hopefully, when your kids grow up, they can have the same twinkle in their eye when they’re asked about Christmas as we do. We hope that as your families roll into this holiday season that you get to enjoy the magical feeling and make the best memories and traditions together. We’ll be right there with you trying. You don’t need to do motherhood alone. Come join our village exactly as you are.