Here Comes Santa Claus?

Today as the kiddo and I wandered the aisles of Toys R Us looking for, among other things, a gift for a woman who I'm not sure I could pick out of a line up who is due with her first child (a girl) and happens to be in my MOPS small group and thus must be gifted I found myself humming quietly under my breath. This is not, in and of itself, unusual - having a child has been a wonderful prop to offset the talking/singing/humming/whatevering to myself that used to go on while I was out and about. (I don't know if it's just because I live in my own little world or because I'm so self-conscious that I have to distract myself - maybe a combination of the two. Regardless, I have this running commentary where ever I go. At least now I can direct it to the kiddo. He's pretty verbal for his age I'm told.) But then it hit me...I was humming Christmas music.

It seems a tad early for them to be piping the Christmas music into the store but after a careful listen, it turns out that that is exactly what was going on. And thus the gift I finally settled on is a cute little Christmas-y outfit for the baby girl. I guess maybe subliminals aren't always bad.

This has, however, prompted more thought on the whole sticky wicket of Santa Claus. We are a bit divided (Tim and I) about how to handle said entity. I'm all for the straight, honest approach. This is how I was raised and I really like my mom's rationale for why they did it this way. Essentially, we always knew that Santa was not real - even though we got gifts "from Santa" as well as from members of the family. We even left cookies and milk out for him, knowing full well that daddy would eat them. I don't feel that my childhood was ever compromised in this way and mom later explained that she could never get behind all the lies that adults have to tell to try and "keep Santa real". I'm down with not lying to my children. Tim, on the other hand, is a little more pro-Santa, seeing it as a relatively harmless fiction...and I can also get behind the idea of not being the parent of the child who ruins it for everyone else (though I'm pretty sure that my sister and I were never the ones who did so for other kids since mom and dad were pretty open about how other people pretended he was real, etc. So that's fairly avoidable.)

Of all the dilemmas parenting presents this one seems rather trivial, but it still leaves me wondering what to do, because at the end of the day, I don't want Christmas to be about Santa and I'd just as soon leave him as much out of the whole shebang as possible and focus on Christ's birth. But even with that said, it seems like we have to make some kind of "Santa decision" - and probably soon - because he's popping up everywhere and the kiddo is starting to notice.