Getting Old

Christmas came down today. Since I was already being held prisoner by the HVAC repairman, I figured I might as well be productive instead of fuming while I waited. Usually, when I take down the Little People nativity I have to do a fair amount of sorting and searching. Because this is the nativity my little ones can play with, things tend to get confused. But, this year there were no Clone Troopers guarding the manger. The farmer's cows had not replaced the camel and no reindeer were in with the sheep and donkey. The angel remained atop the roof. The only wandering that happened was that M seemed to think the wisemen (with their crowns; they are 3 Kings, you know) needed to visit the castle, otherwise known as the ceramic church from Grandma's village, but even these visits nearly always resulted in the wisemen returning to their places aside the baby Jesus. My babies are growing up. Christmas is quickly leaving the phase of trying to protect the decorations and the children from each other and entering the era of expectation where the children have memories and plans of how things should go each year. We are quickly leaving the land of big and cheap presents and entering the land of expensive and tiny presents with the wish lists that would break Bill Gates (and I suppose it's also a sign of the times that when searching for the thing to "break" I couldn't say "bank" because too many of those have already been broken of late and instead I had to come up with some independently rich and seemingly unbreakable entrepeneur, what a world we live in!).

I don't know how I feel about this. Christmas is a complicated holiday. There are so many commercial expectations, past traditions to live up to, Joneses to keep up with. And all that is a dangerous aside from the Savior we are to be revering and celebrating in the first place. I suppose this aging of Christmas is just a snapshot of the aging of my family. M is a Sunbeam now; I have no children in nursery. CE will be in YW in less than a month and is having a difficult time processing, let alone following her grandmother's sage advice to be the age she is instead of wishing to be older, sooner. And that is sage advice for the aging of my family: to enjoy the ages we are instead of longing too fervently for the future or being overly wistful of what has past.

My kids asked a lot this year about Santa. They've heard rumors, read allusions in their chapter books. I don't want to dash illusions or trample magic so I merely say "believing is a choice." Believing is always a choice. And still I do find myself somewhat wistful for the recent past when questions seemed limited to when and why and not if. Getting older is a mine field and there are no clone troopers to guide our way.