Channeling My Inner Santa

The Christmas after I turned 6 - the year I was in Kindergarten - Santa brought me the ugliest pink bike on the planet. I should confess, my assessment of it as the ugliest pink bike on the planet, is from my thirtysomething eyes. When I was 6, it was the exact bike I wanted. I had specifically pointed it out to my parents - sitting outside the hardware store with all the other shiny new bikes - indicating that that exact bike - the one with the extra wide, extra squishy pink seat and rubber pink handlebar grips - was the one I was going to ask Santa for.

When it arrived in my living room that Christmas, I was ecstatic. Not just because Santa had brought me a bike, but because he had brought the exact bike I had asked for. This should have been my first clue that Santa was someone other than a fat old man in red, fur-lined pajamas, but I was so caught up in the magic I didn't begin to even have doubts for another two years. I still remember it as one of my best Christmases ever - and it has been more than a quarter century since that day. Of course, it may also have to do with the fact that I also got a new brother that Christmas, but I doubt it.

The point is, Santa scored big brownie points that Christmas. In fact, Santa was pretty good at scoring brownie points every Christmas. I want to be that Santa for my kids - he never fulfilled every wish, but he knew just how to fulfill one wish perfectly - and that's really all that mattered.

Himself is generally the chief present-purchaser (fitting, as he is also the chief spender) in the family. Last year he had scoped out a present for Woodstock before we had even found a Halloween costume for her. It was perfect. It was Woodstock's first Christmas that she sort of got the point, and she was ecstatic to find a play kitchen had magically appeared in our living room overnight. (Never mind the "magical appearance" involved 2.5 hours, a couple of screwdrivers, a 30-page instruction booklet and two grumpy parents the night before).

This year, Himself is as stumped as I am though. We ask Woodstock if she wants anything for Christmas - because she isn't old enough to realize she is "expected" to want something (is it wrong to hope it lasts forever?), she either responds with a blank stare or some random toy with which she played that day at the sitter's. I have left every toy add and catalog out within easy viewing for her - hoping it will spark a conversation that will lead to some brilliant idea. While Woodstock LOVES the fact that she gets "maz-a-gines" in the mail - particularly the Playskool ones - the only thing she indicated that she might possibly want was a $350 outdoor play set that would take up our entire backyard. I don't allow her to watch television on channels that have commercials, which means she isn't bombarded with images of hundreds of cheap, plastic, imported toys that require both assembly and a lifetime supply of AA batteries.

Alas, my other Santa problem is I really dislike shopping - particularly between Halloween and New Years. Particularly for children's items, as parents seem to take a daily dose of crazy pills during that time and seem to think they (and by extension their kids) are the most important people in the universe. It also doesn't help that I am taking big strides while my kids are little to limit expectations in the gift department - so I can't just buy a bunch of things and hope that one of them fits the bill.

And then ... sometime between cutting off a sheet of butcher paper for the latest art project yesterday and scrubbing watercolors off the tablecloth this morning, it hit me ... an epiphany of epic proportions. An easel. An artist's easel with paper and a chalkboard and a place for her watercolors and ... perfect! This is, after all, the child who routinely plasters the front door and refrigerator door with her creations. This is the child who will draw, doodle or color on any piece of paper in reach, who has three sets of colored pencils - for the car, home and church, and who sat yesterday morning and water colored for 90 minutes (an eternity when you're talking 3-year-olds).

We might just be able to pull off this Santa charade.