Jolly Old St. Nick

So, for those of you believe that Santa arrives on Christmas Eve and brings presents to you via your chimney, I say this: Absolutely True!  (also, you might want to quit reading now).

I was young when I was "told" about Santa.  But somehow, I think my parents (mom) and I has a tacit understanding that I wasn't going to admit it out loud, and so presents from Santa continued to appear under the tree for me up until about.... well, maybe they still do.  I had not looked forward to the day that the kids came home and asked me about it, but I should have had a plan because I know Jacob started to get suspicious last year.  Thank God for NORAD's Santa Tracker.

So the other day, Jacob and I were sitting on the couch and he said "Some kids at school are saying that their moms and dads put presents under the tree and say they are from Santa Claus.  Is that true mom?"

I'll note here I always have a bit of difficulty with the phrase "is that true, Mom?" due to Brian's tendency to tell our children tall tales, like, for instance, their toes will fall off when they grow their adult toes; which prompts them to turn their doe eyes to me with the phrase "is that true, Mom?" at which point I can only dumbly stare at the floor and mutter "uh....." to which they will then turn back to Brian and say "that's not true Dad."

But this time I managed a "well, what do you think?" because there's no defense like a good offense.  Also, I needed to buy some time.

Jacob replied that "well, of course they are wrong!" with the conviction and tone of voice of someone who clearly thinks they attend school with morons.  But then a quick moment of doubt: "Right, mom?"

So my reply (that I'm not totally happy about giving) was this: "Well, if you stop believing in Santa then he won't visit you and your parents will HAVE to buy the presents for under the tree because wouldn't it be sad if there was nothing there on Christmas morning.  But I hope that you still believe, because I really don't want to do the extra shopping."

At which point Jacob looked up at me and laughed: "yeah.... you don't want to do any extra shopping."