Every year my husband Ian and I have a brief battle with Christmas and what it means for our family.  We are not Christian, we don’t belong to any type of church or religious organization, and we are too old to truly believe in Santa.  To complicate the matter further we have a menorah and several dreidels in our home even though we are not Jewish because our children have gone and go to an amazing Jewish preschool.  I was raised Catholic and Santa came to my home every Christmas Eve after midnight mass.  My husband’s family led a similar religion-less life much like our own now.  They spent time with family and friends on Christmas Eve which became a tradition that would go on today if they had not left Carbondale. But for us, for this family we still are trying to figure out what Christmas means?

We started to try to define it as Family Time by attempting to tone down our family’s conspicuous consumption on December 25th. To do that we decided to adopt our friends’ gift giving plan for Christmas.  It works great for them as they are Catholic and do not have any of the above mentioned Holiday Angst.  Their plan is simple:  three presents for each child.  If three presents were good enough for Jesus then three presents are just fine for their children.  Of course they have not mentioned the value of the gifts given the Christ Child, but their kids are smart and they will figure it out in time.  So two years ago we sat Oscar down to explain the above mentioned plan.  He sat.  He thought.  Then he looked right at me and said, “Who the hell is Jesus?” 

Right. And that begs the question, So what the hell is Christmas?  I guess for us for now it is all about magic.  Santa is magic, you know.  How else would he get all those presents to all those kids?  And even magic has its answers, right?  Copperfield, Penn & Teller, David Blaine all have their secrets and they all have answers to the age old question, “How did you do that?” they just choose not to answer.  However, this brings about yet another one of the worries that Ian and I have: once the Santa Magic has been uncovered will we get the question of, “Why did you do that?”  “Well … on nights you didn’t want to go to bed for a brief moment in time we had the upper hand?”  or “In desperate times you use desperate measures?” or how about this “Magic doesn’t happen all on its own, it always has a helping hand.” 

So maybe that is what our Christmas is about, at least for now:  Magic.  The belief in something unbelievable.  The joy of being with family.  The wonder of knowing that every year someone will bring you a treasure no matter what.  The delight in knowing that for a flicker in time my children believe in something much, much larger than life.