Santa doesn't stop here.

I have very few memories of kindergarten or any years prior, but I will never forget ruining Christmas for my five-year-old friend, Lindsay Mann.

"But Santa isn't real," I told her in a matter-of-fact voice.  "It's your parents.  They get the gifts for you and say they're from Santa.  How do you think he knows what you want?"

Lindsay didn't believe me...until after Christmas that year.

"Mary Rachel, you were right," she admitted.  "I found my new bike in the garage before we had Christmas.  Then, when I opened it on Christmas, my parents said that it was from Santa!  Can you believe that?!"

Of course I could.

Looking back on that experience now, I feel badly that I shattered Christmas 1993 for Lindsay and her parents.  I'm sure that no parents want their kids discovering the truth about Santa from their daughter's friend, the Kindergarten Grinch.  And I definitely don't want my girls to be the ones who do the same for someone else.

That said, Santa doesn't stop at our house.

{Before I go any further, I should mention that whatever you do in your house for Christmas is your decision.  I don't know what's best for your family; I'm simply writing about what we feel is best for ours.  Christmas is a touchy subject, and I am certainly in no position to judge or to make claims about the way that everyone should or shouldn't celebrate it.}

Our three-year-old, Piper, has already heard mixed reviews about Santa at school.  We tell her that he's sort of like a superhero, comparing him to Batman or The Hulk, both of which can do some impressive things but only exist in movies or on the pages of books.  We also tell her that many of her friends believe other things about Santa, and that's okay.

When people ask my husband why we choose not to do Santa with our kids, he says, "Well, I kind of want credit for those gifts that we get her!"  I love that guy.

I've never had any particular attachment to Santa.  However, I knew that whoever I married would most likely have celebrated Christmas very differently than the way I did growing up (read: We did not celebrate it at all), and we would probably need to meet somewhere in the middle about what to do with the big guy in the red suit.

Weirdly, the thing that sealed the deal for us and shut Santa out of the Fenrick house was Piper's adoption.

Adoption can be so confusing, but we have always desired to be open with Piper about all of it.  We want her to feel that she can come to us with questions about her adoption, and that she can trust us to give her true answers about it.

My fear with Santa (and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny) is that if we tell her for years that he exists and then Piper later finds out that he does not, how will she believe us about much else?  Little people can be very intelligent, but their logic is often faulty.  What if we continually told Piper that she was wanted and loved by her birth mother and by us (which is true), but the world tells her something different?  What about God?  Will she believe that he is real because we have repeatedly claimed that he is?  Will we have proved ourselves to be trustworthy?  Will she believe our voices about the others that she hears?

People seem shocked when I tell them that we do not "do Santa" with our children.

"Well do you even do Christmas?"

"What?!  I can't imagine Christmas without Santa."

"That's like taking the magic of Christmas away from your child!"

Maybe I am a mean mom by depriving my girls of the Santa experience.  I am totally willing to acknowledge that this is a possibility.  I may look back when they're grown and realize that we did all of this wrong.  Lord knows it won't be the only thing we messed up when they were little.

But to me, what's magical about Christmas is not Santa.  It is Jesus. 

It is magical that the God of all of the universe would come to our messy earth through the womb of a virgin...for me.  That seems like a completely crazy thing to believe, but really not too much crazier than a guy living at the North Pole and traveling around the world in one night to give all the things to all the kids.  I know that some people successfully pull off Santa and Christ in their own homes, but I guess I am too simple-minded for that.

Back to depriving my kids, can I tell you something?

Piper loves the story of Jesus.  That kid wakes up asking when we get to do the "elephant (advent) calendar" and, "Is it Christmas yet?  When do we get to put baby Jesus on the elephant calendar?"  If you ask her, I don't think she would say that she is missing out on anything.

Truthfully, I have often woken up thinking about the advent calendar lately, too.  I hear Piper's little voice reciting the Christmas story better than I can, and my cold heart melts a little more.

"Jesus is the greatest treasure of all.  This is the story of how he came to us..."

School In This Season

When I was six years old, my dad graduated from college.  He was 41.

I clearly remember his graduation ceremony, partly because my little brother was complaining of a stomachache the entire time, partly because the ceremony itself was dreadfully long and boring for a first grader, and partly because I thought my dad was just so cool to be walking across the stage in a black hat and "dress".  

For years, I never knew that graduating as a 41-year-old was not exactly "normal".  I always just knew that Daddy worked tirelessly for our family.  He was, and is still, the only one of his four siblings to graduate from college, just as my granddad was one of a select few in his generation to do the same.

I went to college because my granddad started a college fund for both my brother and me when we were infants, and this savings account grew until I was 18 so that my parents paid relatively little to help me attend the University of Oklahoma.  I never took out student loans.  I realize that, in today's world, that is nothing short of a miracle. 

I also went to college because of the legacy that my granddad left even after his passing and the example that my dad gave me as he completed his degree.  I honestly didn't realize that there were other options after high school, and I'm not sure that I would have considered them anyway.  

College as an 18-year-old certainly required some effort on my part, but much of my time at OU was spent playing ultimate frisbee until 2:00 a.m. and doing lunch dates in the Union.  I graduated with an excellent GPA and did not kill myself trying to do so.  My social life was rich.

Today, I'm back in school ten years after graduation, and I am just now comprehending the many sacrifices that my dad made for our family when I was little.  He worked full-time, went to school in the evenings, and still found time to be with Tim and me.  I remember him being gone at night, but he was never absent from our lives. 

Several years ago, I started working on my master's degree at OU.  The longer I was in school, the less I felt the calling to become a reading specialist.  My original motive to pursue a higher degree was based out of a love for learning and a desire to recreate my undergrad experience.  Selfishly, I wanted to boost my ego and knew that a master's degree would make me look better on paper.  In the end, those were not good enough reasons to continue.

This time around is different than when I was fresh out of high school, and it is also different than when I was working on a higher level degree.  

This time, school is for my family.

It has not been my favorite to come home from lab at 10:00 p.m. and still have studying to do, and there are so many days when it feels impossible to hold a part-time job and make everyone stop screaming and fold the laundry and do all the things.  (I truly have no idea how single parents do it.)  College isn't exactly fun this time around.  It's also expensive, and I frequently find myself questioning if all of this is worth it.  But, I keep coming back to the same answer that it is, or at least it will be.

It will be worth it when I can help my girls pay for their own college and their weddings.  It will be worth it to have a job which allows my people to get my best instead of getting my leftovers because I gave everyone else's people my best all day.  It will be worth it when I can say, "Yes, I will read you that book for the 47th time today because I can because it's a Tuesday and I only work three days a week."

Right now, all of those "worth its" seem forever away.  They are at least seven more semesters away, to be exact.  They are coming, though, and that thought has pushed me through many a night when I would rather be home with my family than listening to another lecture about electrons and other topics which have virtually no relevance in my everyday life.    

I finished this first semester back in college with As, but my perfectionist self surprisingly would have been okay if I hadn't.  I don't need to be perfect to do well or to get accepted into the dental hygiene program (I hope!).  Sometimes, everyone's best interest is found in closing the textbook and running around in the backyard with the little people, who aren't going to be little for much longer.

As somewhat of a related sidenote, God has continued to show me grace when I've most needed it throughout this semester.  I randomly had the sweetest lab partner who became a good friend as the weeks passed.  She works, is married, has two little girls the same ages as mine, and tries to balance it all, too.  We struggled through tests together, ruined labs together, and laughed a whole lot.  This is Amanda, and she made chemistry not only bearable, but kind of fun sometimes.