Santa Claus

I have struggled slightly with the fact that we are basically lying to the kids. I can't quite get my head around that idea, and hopefully I still have a few years before I face Ashley questioning the validity of Santa Claus. The things that keep me a little sane about the how thing is that I don't remember the "moment" I knew Santa wasn't real, and I still believe in a little magic every once in a while (Disney, anyone?).

And then I read this post by one of my favorite bloggers. I am reposting a little bit of the story here because part of it happens where I grew up - Stafford, Virginia. The same place where my Grandmother will spend Christmas in a hospital bed, unable to get up and take care of herself.

"And then one Christmas my friend Angela told me a story of when she was an elementary school teacher in Stafford, Virginia. Every Christmas Angela and her co-workers identified families who might be having trouble making Christmas happen, pooled their money and helped to buy presents for them.

Angela was coming down the hallway on the last day of school when she found a little girl crying on the steps.

“Santa’s not coming to our house this year,” she said. “My mother says it’s because we don’t have money, but I know it’s because I wasn’t a good girl.”

The little girl wasn’t one of the children Angela and her friends had identified, but her situation turned out to easily be the worst. The girl and her brother, mother and grandmother were struggling to survive, much less have Christmas.

Angela called her husband, a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant stationed in Okinawa, Japan.

“I feel so bad,” she told him. “What do we do?”

“Get the family’s name and address,” he told her. “And the ages of everyone in the house. I’ll see what I can do.”

From Japan, Angela’s husband called back to the Marine Corps base at Quantico. The following afternoon, Christmas Eve day, the little girl from Angela’s school was playing in her house when there was a knock at the door. Her mother opened it to find two young Marines in dress blue uniform.

While her mother stared in astonishment, the Marines began to move boxes of things into the house — food, gifts for everyone, and a tree.

The 20 year-old Corporal — stationed away from his own family (he would have dinner at Angela’s the following night) — stopped to speak to the little girl.

“Santa was worried he might not make it to your house this year,” he said. “So he called in the Marines and asked us to help out. He said to tell you you were a very good little girl and he was proud of you.”"

Read the whole post about Da Momma and her girls here. Take a box of tissues with you.

Merry Christmas.