KC and I also got all the Christmas shopping done for Young Master Thing today; I am enjoying the last year where we can buy his presents right in front of him without his even noticing. The tricky part is hiding them from Miss Leah, who is right on the Santa Claus cusp. This will be the last year we can push it, though I'm sure she'll play along for Adam. If it was at all possible to keep having children in order to stretch Santa Claus as long as I could, I would do it. I never used to enjoy Christmas as an adult. One year I couldn't even be bothered to put up a tree. We always travelled, we were broke, I didn't care. Then we had kids and Christmas became exciting again. I know it's the time of year where people carry on about Santa and how they were too smart and omg too edgy to believe in Santa, or how parents who lie to their children about Santa will deserve whatever fucked-up kids they get as a result of being a big fat Falsehood McFibberson, but my take on it has always been well-represented by Mary Rommely, Francie Nolan's long-suffering grandmother:

"Because. . . the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things which are not of this world. Then when this world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."

When challenged on this by her daughter Katie, Mary responds:

"That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character."

Hell, I've already disappointed Leah six ways from Sunday, if you ask her. What's discovering the truth about a fake fat man in a red suit going to do to her that I haven't already done? It's not like he brings her a later bedtime or a note excusing her from eating asparagus.

Don't any of you dare suggest to her to ask for those, either. I'll hunt you down.