reminds me of the one I love

Here's how we pieced together our yuletide spirit in Astoria...

Christmas tree: umm, nonexistent.

Ornament tree: existent! branches from Astoria Park, stuck in the hole of a wooden wine box, draped with one of Clement's baby blankets. hey, it worked.

Chestnuts: Sean brought back from a trip to California, but don't let that ruin the nostalgia. We roasted some and they tasted great. Sean had this clever idea of temporarily storing the remainder in a vase on this counter over the radiator, but they mildewed or something and went bad. Lovely decoration, but also a mourned loss.

Window garland: Granny Holloway sent Josephine a bunch of those stickers you get from donating places-- from the kidney foundation or something like that. They were shiny silver, with Christmas themes. Josephine and I stuck them back-to-back along a piece of sewing string. It would twist around and sparkle a bit. Such flair!

Radiator grate hangings: I have become a regular user of the diapers.com family of websites for certain products that aren't easy to get around here. For a while, their packages conveniently contained coupons with snowflake graphics. Josephine cut out the snowflakes and glued them on slices of cork.

(You can guess Sean's and my sacrificial contribution to this project...)

Ornaments: A couple were true ornaments... like the shellacked leaf we picked up in Vermont and the Noah's Ark that Mama Jo sent. In Rhode Island, the best Sean found was a life-saver shaped bottle opener. classy! The rest took a bit of prep-work and planning, but mostly made for fun table-time projects with Josephine during the weeks leading up to Christmas. I shaped some hanger wire into our initials, she wrapped them with yarn. I marked off strips of paper, she cut them. I helped her glue strips into paper onions, or fasten them into spreadable ball ornaments. She intermittently helped me with some paper mache balls (messiness is not up her alley). I made a crafty little ball out of a Queens bus map (which I later regretted when I needed the map). We cut the fronts off cards people mailed and hung those, too. Everything was free and repurposed-- and nothing especially fabulous-- so I took the approach of "do a lot so no single object attracts too much attention." Worked for us!!

the last project was these salt dough ornaments.
In my opinion, Sean was a overly upset that I used his pink Himalayan sea salt.
It's all we HAD. You think I wanted to risk carpal tunnel syndrome grinding up
1/4 cup of those chunks?

One of Sean's colleagues hosted a cookie swap party in Brooklyn. I opted for an afternoon of hibernation while he took Josephine, but I did contribute the following cookies. Josephine helped me mix up the dough and sprinkle the hedgehogs. I can't remember where I found the idea, or else I'd link to the genius and give her proper credit. I just used a simple recipe for the pecan sandies; melted chocolate glues on the sprinkles.

I "won" the cookie swap, but in reality, these were a HUGE mistake.

Look at their little faces! I felt HORRIBLE sending my

little army of hedgehogs off to the slaughter.

We have mostly attended Astoria Community Church during our time here, which is a plant of Queens Presbyterian. They are a sweet and nice group of people. It's a mile walk to get there, though-- and we've only ever been to the synagogue where they meet, not the actual offices or events other than the regular service. The distance has been a barrier when it comes to being involved beyond just Sunday mornings. On the odd occasion, I/we have gone to Immaculate Conception, a Catholic church just around the corner from our apartment. The monsignor is a very kind man, I like his homilies, and it's undeniably convenient. (Plus, how cool is it that they still offer regular masses in Italian?? Exactly.)

Anyway, Immaculate Conception had a carol singing/tree lighting/nativity blessing/Santa Claus sighting the Sunday evening before we were heading to Texas-- all activities it seemed good to expose Josephine to, especially considering her fondness for the large nativity set the church had set out front. (At her demand, we had been discussing the characters every time we passed it.)

before the children's choir started the carols

After the carols, the nativity blessing in the cold rain, the lighting of the enormous tree outside, and the arrival of Santa on a fire engine with sirens, we went down in the school's cafeteria where she would talk to Santa. I'd say we sufficiently overwhelmed her that evening.

Moments like these make me proud of my parenting.

That look says it all.

Standing in line to see Santa

She had no idea what to tell him.

Over the previous days I had suggested thinking of a gift to request, but I don't think she ever did, because I heard him say something like "You don't want ANYTHING??"

The Anastasopoulos' decorations in the front of our house.
Josephine and I cut out snowflakes for our front windows.

Since she clearly needed help figuring out what to tell Santa, Sean started dropping obvious suggestions about her needing a new toothbrush, and I encouraged her to write a letter to Santa asking for one. We did that the next morning and mailed it. She knew we were opening gifts the next day, so she was quite skeptical that he could get the letter and toothbrush in time, and did not trust me when I said I bet he could... "Santa's special." She suggested that if this plan didn't work, we ask Grandma or Mama Jo for the toothbrush.

(Because who needs Santa when you have grandmothers?)

Our Astorian Christmas.

Yes, Santa brought her a toothbrush. She was adorably shocked and pleased.

[WARNING: SOAPBOX AND SPOILER ALERT! If you are unenthused about my soapboxes and/or very enthused about your personal Christmas traditions, you are advised to skip all remaining text. You know you just come here for the pictures anyway!!]

A note on Santa: We're doing our best to walk that line between emphasizing the REAL event of Jesus' birth while letting her enjoy the "fun story" of Santa Claus.

Last year, she wasn't asking complicated questions about Santa or God, so it was all fairly noncommittal and unconcerning:

Christmas = Jesus' birthday.

The guy in red = Santa.

Simple.

We focused on Jesus' birthday, and she didn't pay Santa that much attention. This year was an entirely different ballgame. I had to field questions constantly. We did our best to explain the difference between Santa being a fun idea and Jesus being real. We stuck to the truth. But the fact of the matter is that we desire her to enjoy both facets of Christmas, so we had to be careful in how we struck the balance.

It helped to live in a neighborhood where there were nearly as many nativity sets decorating lawns (lawns?? these can't be lawns. but they aren't stoops. what are they?) as there were Santas and snowmen. I loved how excited she got about the nativity sets, because as a matter of principle, we feel Christmas should be about Christ. Regardless of the accuracy of the date, it is the time of year in the church calendar dedicated to focusing on his birth. I do think putting this principle into practice requires intentional emphasis on what this season is really about; everyone knows it's frighteningly easy to lose sight of Christ in the midst of the commercialism and hustlebustle of the holidays. So I tried to reserve my more passionate storytelling for discussing the role of Christ in Christmas and just filled in holes in the Santa Claus story as needed. In the end, my focus on Christ and realism towards Santa in no way impeded the Santa storyline from completely permeating her Christmas. For better or for worse, I would wager both Christ and Santa ended up on fairly equal footing, despite our emphasis.

Of course, being honest about the fact that Santa is NOT the priority doesn't mean we don't value his tradition-- so Sean and I found ways to facilitate her engagement with him. (Hence taking her to see him, helping her write a letter, asking her, "Hmmm! I don't know how he got the toothbrush in here! You're right that we don't have a chimney. What do you think he did?" and encouraging her creative explanations.)

I appreciate the place Santa holds in a child's imagination. It's like the tooth fairy, or leprechauns, or unicorns, or any number of fantastical tales. They are wonderful and charming and children SHOULD indulge in letting them run away with their imaginations. The good thing about Josephine already having a remarkably active imagination is that knowing Santa is pretend doesn't detract from her experience of him at all. Every hour of every day I am updated on the happenings in her pretend world and the complicated interweaving of countless plot lines; each doll has at least a dozen things going on at once. Constricting Santa to the world of make-believe isn't constricting at all-- trust me. Indeed, even the members of the Holy Family keep regular company with her. For a while, Briana was Baby Jesus, who fortunately, was always reported to be smiling sweetly... and who, unfortunately, had a uniquely constructed manger that I was forbidden to relocate to a more reasonable location. ("But isn't he too HOT on top of the radiator?" "No.")

My point is that real and pretend seems a little jumbled at times, anyway. Being honest about Santa from the get-go has not marred her enjoyment of him. And like Sean mentioned to me-- she will probably let go of pretending about Santa about the same time that other kids let go of believing he's real. It's still the same period of happy engagement, it just won't end in the disillusionment and disappointment that would be a very real risk with her, if you know Josephine and her desire to be right and in control. I wouldn't dream of misleading this child on any topic at all. Even, "We might go out to eat tonight..." results in extreme frustration if we change our minds and stay in. ("WHAT? YOU SAID WE WERE GOING TO A RESTAURANT!")

In short, the girl likes to be right. Heaven forbid we intentionally set her up to find out she was wrong all along!

In sharing some of how this all played out this year, I should also admit one major limitation: We've figured out with time that even the most well-considered parenting philosophies rarely play out as perfectly as one might hope. The kids are kind of a major factor in the game. It's like trying to win UNO when your opponent draws exclusively from a private deck of wildcards. The odds. are. against. you. So, the truth is that what we say often has little impact on what Josephine remembers. Josephine could have asked the most well phrased questions (ha!), at times when I was properly caffeinated and energetic (ha! ha!), I could have presented my philosophies in perfectly-sized doses and digestible three year old terms (ha ha ha!), at times when she was tooootally focused on every word I said (hahahahahahaHA!) and then... you know what? It would all be for naught because Katerina and Nicole (the elementary-aged girls downstairs) hung a Santa sign outside the front door. If you know her admiration of these girls, you will not be surprised to hear that this one move alone immediately escalates Santa to the level of deity, regardless of anything I could have said, no matter how perfectly I'd executed my part.

Indeed, I'm very curious to see where things stand in her little head come next December. In this last season alone, Sean and I found ourselves having to periodically adjust our emphasis based on what we were hearing back from her, in an effort to provide her with the most balanced, properly prioritized experience of Navidad. Oh, and mentioning the downstairs girls reminds me: I have, for the record, done my best to explain that while we enjoy pretending about Santa, many children believe he's not pretend, and it is fun for them to believe that -- so she is not ever to suggest any differently! Like I said, we'll have to see what she has retained come next December, and troubleshoot accordingly.

Suffice it to say, we're doing our best. We take our job as parents seriously but hold the results lightly. There are SO many wild cards that are NOT in our hands.