Christmas Through The Eyes of A Child

One of the most precious things about being a parent is the chance to re-live the wonder of childhood through my children. I distinctly remember my oldest daughter’s second Christmas. She was almost two years old and was finally aware enough of what was going on to have some definite opinions about our family traditions.

The first thing the adults did was to buy a tree. That’s right, they went out and bought a tree. Now, keep in mind that she was not allowed to bring sticks, leaves, dirt or pinecones into the house on the pretence that they would make the house dirty, but all of a sudden an entire tree gets brought into the house and placed in the middle of the living room. When my husband brought it in, she kept looking at me clearly waiting for me to reiterate the rules and make him “take that outside.” Not only did the tree stay inside our house, those adults actually looked pleased about it. Then we promptly got out a box of decorations, and hung shiny things all over that tree! Next came little lights that blink on and off. After setting up such an unexpected display, our next move was to invoke a “no touching” rule.

Within the next few days, pretty packages wrapped in bright paper and tied with sparkly bows started appearing under the tree. With strict warnings not to touch the presents!! This amazing phenomenon lasted a few weeks, and then one morning both parents got up plopped her down in front of the tree and handed her a package. She just stared at it, having been reminded several hundred times by now about that “no touching” rule. Then with smiling faces we encouraged her to rip open the paper! She was not about to be tricked into breaking that rule, what was the matter with everyone? Had everyone gone insane? The pictures from that Christmas morning are precious, and well, if you look at it from her point of view she’s right, we didn’t make much sense at all did we?

And let’s not even mention two months later, when we lit her dessert on fire, stood around singing and then expected her to put out the fire! Birthdays’ didn’t make much sense either.