There are a lot of things we’ve lost this year. A lot of traditions broken. Our annual family trip to Maine was cancelled. Birthday parties, get togethers, even the Boston Marathon is going to miss two years. So when I started thinking about what Christmas was going to look like this year, there was one thing I didn’t want to give up. Sure it’s not the most important tradition, and I’m sure the kids wouldn’t have noticed, but I realized it would make me feel a little bit better if this one wasn’t broken.
And honestly anything I can do to feel a little bit normal these days, I’ll take it. My coping strategy with this pandemic seems to be part good enough and part humor. So that’s what led me to order Tom a Santa suit back in September.
I knew we wouldn’t be going to the mall to see Santa like normal, but this seemed like a way that we could maybe still have our Santa photo. So one day I had Tom put the suit on and figured we’d see what we got. The suit actually ended up looking better than I expected, and there was the added bonus that no one was afraid of Santa-dad!
The one thing that I didn’t think of, was that we’d just gone through Halloween, and when the toddlers saw Dad getting in a costume, they assumed that’s what we were doing! Especially since E was Santa for Halloween last year. So apparently that’s my bad for mixing holidays.
So in the spirit of 2020, I said, sure why not. You want to wear your Cookie Monster costume and sit on Santa-dad’s lap? Sure. Elmo wants to join the party too? Sure. Is this the most 2020 Christmas photo ever? I think so.
Worth it.
As we do, we started the Christmas season off early this year. I used to have a strict, wait until after Thanksgiving rule, but it’s definitely been relaxed lately. We still don’t have any Christmas trees up, but there are wrapped presents in my house, decorations are ready to go up soon, and we’ve done a few holiday events already. Speaking of those, we’ve had some hits and misses.
One of the hits for me at least, was visiting Santa! The older two are always a bit confused about why we’re doing it, and claim they don’t want to go, but I swear they have a lot of fun once we’re there. E jumped right in on signing his name to the “nice list” book they had, and then did G’s name too while G was warming up to everything. But soon they were both chatting with Santa, posing for pictures, and of course telling their life stories.