Being quiet for Santa

As I was talking to my son Christmas Eve, I realized some of his crankiness throughout the day was- lack of sleep, overabundance of excitement and possibly a certain amount of Type A-ness....

Now my husband is outwardly Type A and I'm an inward Type A person.  Many people would not believe I'm Type A.  I am at work, but I WORK hard at NOT being Type A in my private life for health and spiritual reasons.  It is work though.  When I'm around fellow people who are tightly wound or obsessive compulsive it drives me crazy because it makes it harder for me to LET GO.  I WORK at Letting Go and enjoying God's creation.  Just like we have to work at realizing that Christmas is not a meal, not the perfect gift or anything like that.  Christmas is not anything we earn or work hard for.  Christmas is a Blessing and sometimes we have to let go of our own hangups and lack of perfection and just let ourselves be BLESSED.

As I spoke with my son, I realized he was legitimately worried that his less than stellar behavior would mean no presents and a lump of coal under the tree.  This had been jokingly mentioned and we had mentioned that Santa likes good little girls and boys.  He also informed us sometime this weekend that he did not like the "You better be good" Christmas song.  I reassured my son that Santa, like his mommy and daddy just want him to TRY to be nice.  We don't expect perfection and heaven knows we love him no matter what he does, but we know that God made him to be a great man and so we expect that he tries to fulfill who God made him to be.

His body relaxed and he smiled.  I didn't realize that he was being mentally tormented that because he had less than stellar behavior he was "not going to get Christmas".  We told him that Jesus came precisely because we are all not perfect and that is the Blessing of Christmas.  I then told him he did need to be quiet and stay in his room overnight because Santa does not want to be "discovered".  I told him that when he heard Santa on the rooftop, or the reindeer eating their reindeer food, he had to stay real quiet and pretend he was sleeping.  He then looked at me, tapped me on the shoulders and said, "You have to tell Grandma and Grandpa not to snore and Duchess (our cat) to be quiet so I can listen for Santa and his reindeer."  It was a very sweet moment.

Hope your Christmas was full of sweet moments too!