There’s a kid in One of Two’s class called Fernando. Every time she mentions him, I say, ‘The next time you talk to him, ask him if he can hear the drums.’
As jokes go it’s rubbish, but it does absolutely nail the Crap Dad-Joke on the head. One of Two doesn’t get it of course, as we’ve more or less protected her from Abba. She just looks at me vaguely concerned, wondering if it’s time for the comfy armchair, slippers, cocoa and the Horse of the Year Show. TPCKAM still laughs, which is nice, but after twelve years of repeatedly hearing the same two jokes – Groucho Marx’s ‘He speaks excellent German,’ and ‘You’d never notice it unless you were looking for a bowl of soup’ from A Night in Casablanca – it’s probably just relief.
Three weeks until Christmas. Well into advent calendar season. The four of us have one each this year, none of which have chocolate in them. The kids don’t seem to have noticed that their tradition-loving parents haven’t produced advent calendars with additives and sugar, and are excitedly opening windows every day. Two of Two is so excited that he’s already opened the 24th. I thought of telling him that it meant he wasn’t going to get any presents, but he wouldn’t have believed me anyway. There’s not a lot you can do about your kids opening doors on their advent calendars too early. You might not want them to do it, but it’s just not that much of a crime.
Anyway, it’s more or less too late to tell Two of Two that any dodgy behaviour on his part will see the big fat man with the long white beard skipping our house and hoofing it for the next chimney along. Last year he observed that one of the presents he’d received couldn’t have been made at the North Pole, as it had a bar code on it and was obviously bought in a shop. Then, having heard the story of the real St Nicholas, made the fairly obvious observation that he must be dead by now. Sharp as a button.
We were watching Miracle on 34th Street the other day. The miracle? An old geezer of a judge goes all soppy at the end and awards Santa a hollow court case victory on technical grounds. Great kid’s entertainment. Two of Two said, ‘There’s no such thing as Santa Claus. It’s the parents, isn’t it Dad?’
Tricky. I fudged and stole a line from Dr Seuss. ‘Go ask your mother.’
Had One of Two not been there, then it might have been time to snuggle up with a bottle of ginger wine and a box of mince pies and tell the lad a few home truths about the Great Santa Claus Fraud. The Big Lie. In essence, you see, he doesn’t give a stuff. He doesn’t care where his presents come from, he just wants to get them. He believes in football, chocolate eggs, Scooby Doo, Yoda and Avril Lavigne’s Happy Ending. Tooth Fairies, Santa, monsters in Loch Ness and other such flights of whimsy are of no significance to him.
One of Two however, despite being two years older, still clings to The Great Myth, and will do so for some time to come. We apprised her of the truth about the Tooth Fairy some time ago, but she still talks about the Tooth Fairy in terms that imply she’s not one of her parents. She’s a wee girl, and she wants to believe. Given that so much of her behaviour is pre-teenage, bordering on complete adulthood, it’s nice that some small part of her is still a little girl. As parents, it’s something you want to hang on to as long as possible.
Like the Tooth Fairy business, I’m sure that when we do tell her the truth, she’ll choose not to believe it anyway. I kind of presume that she already really knows, but isn’t saying. However, if you’re going to break the news to your kid, three weeks before Christmas probably isn’t the time. ‘You know how you’re getting excited about Santa coming, and that whole bag? It’s a lie. A huge lie. In fact, a great big whopper of a fib. And although it’s been TPCKAM and I who have been perpetrating this outrageous falsification year after year, you can trust us to get you your selected gift items of the season.’
The right time has to be a sunny day in the middle of July, school holidays just started, the promise of beaches and ice cream and candy floss, when Christmas seems a hundred years away. ‘Sure you can have a toffee apple, but why not go on the trampolines for half an hour first? After the toffee apple you can have another ice cream. Oh, and Santa’s dead.’
The Santa issue is bound to be raised again and again over the next few weeks. We are entering an age of scepticism. The only certainty is that, at the end of it all, we’ll have spent more money on them than we are currently intending to do.
The advent calendars continue. The kids have noticed that on theirs they are getting animals every day and so have started to complain. TPCKAM and I have exciting pictures like Christmas trees and turkeys and, for some reason, cucumber and radish, and the kids are yearning after this kind of December morning thrill. This morning they had to deal with the tragedy of a snowshoe hare and a mountain lion, while their parents were greeted with the rampant excitement of a teddy bear and a lighthouse. They complained.
Kids. A bellyache for every occasion.
No comments:
Post a Comment