Building Holiday Tradition

Earlier this week I told my son that a giant bunny entered our house in the middle of the night for the purpose of leaving him candy and toys.

Jamie seemed oddly comfortable with this, mainly because of the candy and toys, I’m guessing. To be honest, I’m not sure how much of it he truly understood—he’s 2.

I had a more difficult time explaining the Easter bunny to him than I expected. He’s been through two Christmases, but hasn’t quite understand holiday tradition or concepts yet.

He is definitely more impressionable every day and that probably has something to do with my difficulty. Part of me feels like I’m trading on that impressionability by building these holiday traditions. It is sort of like when I told him Elsa plays first base for the White Sox, so that I can get 30 seconds more of baseball before my son melts down because baseball is not Disney. His ability to believe any of that has an expiration date.

Every day he is internalizing more of what we do and say, which is a little nerve-wracking on a day-to-day basis. You never know what you said that you shouldn’t have until it is randomly parroted back at you. Luckily he hasn’t repeated a swear word yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen before I want it to.

On a brighter side, his ability to internalize also means he is ready to start learning concepts and traditions for the major holidays. Every day he is advancing further into boyhood.

Next Christmas will already be Jamie’s third. That is hard to believe. He’ll start to understand more about Santa Claus and Christmas traditions. We’ll tell him about the fat man with the gray beard who travels down chimneys to give all the children presents. We’ll probably ave to be more careful about where we hide the presents at home, as well.

Maybe we’ll tell him that Santa really likes pizza and beer, and can forgo the cookies and milk. Maybe we can embellish to our tastes a little bit?

I want Jamie to have the traditional magic of the holidays, but I just never realized how ridiculous some of these concepts sound until we have to explain them out loud.

I want him to revel in the magic. There’s something extraordinary about a bunny that brings you chocolate and jelly beans, or a tooth fairy that brings you money for missing teeth. There’s something special about an overweight man who manages to jetset across the globe with his fleet of reindeer and a small sleigh to bring EVERY child in the world presents.

I have no qualms with a little magic and tradition. Last week was our first go-around with Jamie. Though I have to admit, I’ll be happy when the logic sets in.