12:17pm Thursday 24th December 2009
By Ruth Campbell
THE seven-year-old, who has been counting down to Christmas since school broke up for the summer holidays, is obsessed with Santa Claus. But I can sense he feels our story doesn’t quite add up. Now the questions are coming as thick and fast as a winter blizzard.
He used to be satisfied with a vague, non-commital “That’s because Santa’s magic” answer to every query. But as he’s got older, he’s made it plain he isn’t falling for that one so easily any more.
So I’ve had to tell him the truth, and it’s not easy.
“How does Father Christmas travel round the world in one night?” he asks. It’s all to do with different time zones, of course. Santa manages to manipulate the fact that it is morning in Australia when it’s night-time here so he can arrive somewhere several hours before he’s even set off, creating more time than he actually has.
Next Albert wants to know how Santa manages to fit everyone’s presents in his sleigh. Like Mary Poppins’s handbag, I explain, it doesn’t have a bottom. Scientists can explain it in the same way as they explain black holes in the universe, but you don’t really need to know all that detail, I tell him.
Albert has a nightmare after we read a Christmas story with an illustration on which he noticed some presents falling off Santa’s sleigh.
“What if my present falls off?” he sobs.
But his sleigh’s made of metal, I tell him. Every present has a special magnetised gift tag so if it falls off, it’s pulled back to the sleigh and sticks onto the side.
“How does he know if we’ve been bad or good, or if we’ve tidied our bedrooms every day, like you keep telling us he wants us to?” Santa invented the first CCTV cameras.
They’re called Santacams and they transmit pictures back to the computer on his sleigh. But he had them all painted with invisible paint, so you can’t actually see them, I add.
“How come grannies and granddads, aunties and uncles and Santa all buy us presents at Christmas, but you and Dad don’t buy us anything?”
That’s because we buy you presents every day – like clothing, food and heating. Mums and dads get a bit of a rest on Christmas Day. Santa’s present to us is that we don’t have to buy you presents. He does it all instead.
“How does Santa fit down our chimney?” He may look fat, but his tummy is really soft and wobbly, I think I read somewhere that it’s made of jelly. That’s how he’s able to squeeze it easily in and out of tight spots.
Just when I think I’ve answered every possible question, he fires another one at me.
“If Santa has a glass of brandy at every house in the world, won’t he get very, very drunk? And if he’s drunk, he shouldn’t be driving, should he?”
I tell him I have heard a rumour that, when all the children are fast asleep, lots of mums and dads sneak downstairs and drink Santa’s brandy themselves. As I say, it’s only a rumour, but I suspect it’s true because there are no records of Santa ever being done for drink driving, I tell him.
He eyes me suspiciously. “How come you and Dad always give me different answers?” he says. Time to get our story straight, I think.
WHEN our ten-year-old, Roscoe, was cast as King Herod in the school Nativity, two of his big brothers recalled that they also played Herod.
Then I read a tabloid newspaper guide to just how revealing your child’s Nativity role is. Mary is usually the prettiest girl and a teacher’s pet, for example. But King Herod, said the guide, is: “Almost as bad as being cast as Hitler or Stalin. What the teacher thinks of your child is unprintable. Later on, your son may find himself the subject of a coup mounted by an ex-SAS officer.” And I’ve got three of them...
‘COULD you do me a favour please?” asked our 18-yearold, who wanted me to wrap a cube-shaped present for his girlfriend. “I can’t do it,” he said. I asked how he had managed to wrap four or five other presents for her so beautifully. He looked at me as if I was an idiot. “But they are all rectangle shaped. I can do rectangles.
This one is a square.” He, incidentally, is the one older son who was never cast as King Herod in his school Nativity. He was always a shepherd. I gave him some motherly advice: “You’re obviously just going to have to buy rectangle-shaped presents for the rest of your life.”
ALBERT was cast as a page in his Nativity. He proudly announced he had a line to say. It was actually a word, the word ‘hello’. He practised it over and over again at home. He tried it loudly then softly, in a high voice and a low voice. Finally, he settled on just the right tone. And when his big moment arrived, he did the best ‘hello’ I have ever heard.
But then, I am his mum.
I WISH you all a very happy Christmas – and don’t forget to finish off that brandy by the fireside tonight. Remember, you’ll be doing Santa a big favour.
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