I wonder if Santa will remember me this year, I am adult to receive gifts, and kids have left home.
November 27th the beginning of advent, this year the feeling of advent was different, there was a huge emptiness. Call it the empty nest; suddenly carol singing and Santa Claus seem too dropped out of the radar.
Despite of being a small town Udupi in a very conservative family my mother had made us believe in Easter bunny, and tooth fairy, of Santa Claus was a community affair, a way of declaring that we were progressive… but since we were children we only appreciated Santa and lot of energy he brought. It is funny the things we get our children to believe, first Santa a magic mythical person who performed the improbable that is handing gifts round the world, then the Easter bunny, from magic we go animal, the reward from toys become chocolate, then as the milk teeth drop we bring in the gossamer winged tooth fairy and reward the child with a coin…asking the child to believe in the currency of the land. Of course in today’s scenario it might dicey.
I realized one really does not out grow Santa…when my daughters were born, we had a mothers group we kept an advent calendar from the onset of advent we put in small gifts for the child till Nativity. Then of course on Christmas Eve Santa visited the houses and gave the kids their goodies. We had the local courier boy help us out. But the excitement the joy we got in putting this whole act together was just as much as it was for kids receiving goodies from Santa.
At the end of the that is what is what Santa is all about, to remind us that it okay to laugh and sing. It is okay to celebrate… there are things we can celebrate each day no matter where we are and how we are it is not the plum cake that he brings or the new hoodie Santa to me is about appreciating little things in everyday life, and celebrating it.
I know a group of lonely women, some divorced, some widowed some for some reason who did not fall into the box, they are a sorority and what they did was each put in a gift for the others and had Santa deliver it to them, it was not just gift, the gift had to be appreciating a specific quality, like when I put in a gift to my friend sunita I say, this is for sunita for being the unconditional support she is to her friends. Whatever, so that is what Santa is about, about appreciation, about acknowledgement,
From being the person who handed out the merit cards, to being my partner in crime in dealing with my kids, Santa has evolved with me, but now I wonder maybe he will forget me, or maybe he will re-invent himself and I won’t recognize him …Well there is only one way to know… let me put my stockings out.
‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’
