Saturday, January 2, 2010

One More Tradition?

I love watching my kids at Christmas.  Even my teen, as he gets older, enjoys the festivities and the surprises of the season.  My youngest, this year, had a new Christmas request.
       "Please Mom, may I leave the window open?"
He begged me to allow him to leave his bedroom window open on Christmas Eve.  Only then would he be able to hear the jingling of Santa's sleigh bells and clickety-clack of his reindeer's hooves.
      "And then when I hear it, I'll be able to see Rudolph's nose lighting up the front yard!".
He had his checklist and evening agenda all planned out: cookies for Santa-check, carrots for the reindeer-check, in his jammies and cooperatively into bed on time-check (into bed---not necessarily asleep---for hours!), what would one more tradition hurt?

I tried to give him the logical argument "Honey, it's freezing outside."
He answered just as logically, " I'll put on extra blankets and my hat and gloves."

Well, this mom said "no way."  Think of the cold he might catch, think of the plethora of safety violations involved here? ;-)

But it did make me wonder about kids in warmer climates?  In rural areas where they say "nobody locks their doors or windows way out here"?  After all, we had spent the entire evening tracking Sants's wherabouts on NORAD, and he'd gone through many very warm countries! Is leaving the window open a Christmas Eve tradition--somewhere?

Luckily, he was only disappointed for a short while...this slight hiccup in his plan only meant he had to listen for Santa and his sleigh EVEN HARDER...and I think that's a tradition in itself, that we've all had.