So, David and I feel that it’s our responsibility as parents to try to raise our girls with faith and some solid core values.  We thought we were doing a decent enough job for this stage in the child-rearing game:  taking SK to mass, saying Grace before meals and prayers before bed, discussing some basics of God and Jesus, etc. here and there.  We thought, okay, we’re on the right track.  We’re raising these girls the way we should.

But if our little foray into holiday preparations is telling me anything, we’re failing miserably. 

Two little scenarios have occurred recently to make me think that we need to up the ante on the whole reason-for-the-Christmas-season conversations with our dear Saoirse.  The first clue was when, last week, Saoirse and I were eating lunch while paging through a new holiday catalog that had arrived that day.  At one point, Saoirse gestured at the catalog and asked me if “Santa Claus lives in there.”  Whoo, boy, I thought.  Thaaat’s not good.  Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  And he lives in Pottery Barn Kids.

Strike two occurred a few days later.  We asked Saoirse if she could name baby Jesus’ mother.   Now, we’ve been over this a billion times, so I smiled proudly in anticipation, waiting for Saoirse’s answer.  Do you know what she said?  “Gram.”  Gram?!  Are you kidding me?  I mean, my mom is definitely a good person and all, but “Gram??”  Maybe she was taking this whole Jesus-is-our-brother thing a little too literally.  I dunno.

So that’s going to be our mission this month: to try to redirect the focus from the getting (oh, but it’s so much fun to shop!) to the reflecting.  As excited as I am for that magical moment Christmas morning when Saoirse first sees that Santa Claus has, indeed, come all the way from Pottery Barn to visit our house, and as manic as I’ve been the last few days shopping online for toys and books and all the fun goodies parents get to give their young children, Saoirse’s been a good reminder that I need to rein in the buybuybuy impulse and focus on the peace/charity/love aspect of the holiday.  So I’ll try to stay away from toysrus.com (and Land of Nod and Pottery Barn and Amazon…oh, this is gonna be hard).  And we made sure to finally get an advent calendar, which is currently winging its way to our house.  Hopefully this will help redirect our focus.  I’m putting the nativity scene front and center in the living room this year, and hopefully, by Christmas Eve, Saoirse will have remembered that, in fact, Mary is the mother of God.  I’ll just have to make sure to keep all pictures of Gram on the other side of the room for awhile.