These days I can’t seem to complete a trip to the gym without nursing Molly in the childcare room. This makes trips to the gym inevitably longer than expected, but what doesn’t take longer than expected these days?
The women who work in the childcare room are across the board fun and welcoming. I enjoy our few minutes of adult conversation while I’m marooned in a nursing chair. Today the topic was Christmas.
One lady shared her three Christmas dilemmas. The first is trying to convince her three year-old son that Santa will be able to come down the chimney even though the couch is pushed up against the fireplace (to prevent their one year-old from repeatedly climbing into the fireplace.) Apparently the son is still not convinced so their furniture will be rearranged on Christmas Eve.
Secondly, she has put all the presents under lock and key in interesting hiding places to prevent said three year-old from wreaking havoc. I have never met this little boy but he sounds a bit like a terror—she describes him as “high energy”—and has shamelessly been opening any package he can find, even if she is in the same room.
Her third dilemma, the one that has her really stumped, is how to properly convey to her son that there isn’t a religious meaning for Christmas. “We’re not religious people,” she said, “So I’ve tried to tell him that Christmas could be any day. That people just picked that day to celebrate Christmas for political reasons. It’s just an arbitrary day; it doesn’t have any meaning.” This apparently leaves her son in a muddle, muttering confused statements about which days are which. Her husband tells her she is using two many words and trying to explain too much. But she is concerned. After all, his grandparents are religious—the boy might figure out that under the hubbub of presents and wrapping and sugary treats that the holiday is actually celebrating something more than Santa Claus and a mystical idea of generosity and love.
