Christmas, blah blah blah.

Those of you know know me well know that I suffer from a chronic and serious dearth of holiday cheer (manic stocking knitting might provide evidence to the contrary, but the truth there is that I just really like to knit). Andy has managed to soften me up to it a little bit over the past several years, and having kids has done some work in that department too - but honestly, my inner core of grinch remains pretty intact. My anti-Christmas ire is complicated and not really worth exploring in this medium, but a Christmas hater like myself is put in a pretty tight spot when kids are involved. There are just certain things you have to do with little kids and I think pretending to be really into Christmas (provided you don't have a good reason to not be into Christmas, like being Jewish) is one of them.

So pretend I will (and do), but I have my limits. I'm not sure if this is the year I'm going to totally enrage everyone by refusing to get into Santa, or if I can put that off until next year. Either way, people will be enraged, you can be certain of that. I don't think Owen is really hip to Santa yet - he does recognize him (unfortunately, he's stopped calling him "Bobby" which he did all last Christmas season, and which I found hillarious) but the whole north pole/toy workshop/round the world in one night/naughty or nice list - I don't think we're there yet. I think we will be next year, and honestly, I just can't picture myself really going with it. I don't mind having Santa be any one of a number of fictional characters that we talk about/read about/watch but I don't see any reason that Santa can't be like Elmo. No one goes to elaborate lengths to convince their kids that Elmo is real, and kids seem to be pretty into Elmo all the same. And I'm pretty sure that my children will still be big fans of Christmas without us acting as if Santa is an actual real person. I'm not planning on denouncing Santa as a fraud, exactly, but the fact that Owen saw me purchase most of what is going in his stocking doesn't bother me one bit. If he has a tacit understanding that the presents he gets on Christmas are actually from me, so much the better, as far as I'm concerned. But then, as we've already discussed, I'm a grinch. A scrooge. Bah, humbug.

So anyway, here we go with the holidays. I'm tired already, and it's not even Christmas Eve. But for those of you with a more normal appreciation of the season, merry merry, happy, happy, cheer cheer, etc. etc. Lots of exciting things happening for Team Cox in 2011, or that's what it looks like from here anyway, and I'm genuinely excited about what's in store. So from our house to yours, enjoy the last few days of 2010 however you celebrate them (or don't), let me know if you didn't get one of our holiday cards and want one, and I'll be back in the new year with more misanthropy (and pictures of cute kids).