My wife is from Berlin and German Kinder leave their boots out on 5th December to wake up to presents left in them by Saint Nikolaus for Nikolaustag. I'm a Brit and Santa's sleigh needs no explaining. My entire step-family are Italian and the bambini there await the arrival of La Befana on Epiphany Eve who is a benign witch like figure who, you guessed it, doles out gifts.
If my children have any wit at all it won't be long before they enthusiastically embrace their tripartite cultural heritage in legitimate expectation of a Trifecta of present receiving. What all of these visitations have in common is the threat of a sanction for bad behaviour, usually coal instead of sweets, although the Germans, as usual, take it to the next level by having some absolutely terrifying beast called Krampus turn up to frighten the living daylights out of little miscreants.
I suspect, in reality, vanishingly few children are in fact spirited away in a barrel rucksack by a devil bearing birch. There is though, to my mind at least, something infantile (and not in a good way) about the expression 'naughty or nice'. If Christmas and Santa specifically is about only receiving the whole thing becomes an exhausting exercise in entitlement.
As the above photograph demonstrates we gave into commercial and cultural pressures to arrange a visit TO rather than FROM Father Christmas. Being made to wait with a score of other families on hard chairs in a corridor as if for a visit to the dentist slightly detracted from the magic. That said I have to give this incarnation full points for his real beard. I want the reassurance of knowing that Santa has been in training since at least the start of October (although the magnolia walls were slightly more North Hampstead than North Pole).
Where I do feel that he really fell short was with his lack of rigour with my children. His examination of their conduct and exploits in 2022 would have embarrassed a first day Bar School student. No details, no dates. No more really than a completely unevidenced assertion that they had been good boys, elicited by a leading question too, for shame. And he didn't even call the best evidence of their conduct when I was standing right there.
Laboured legal assertions aside I do think it would be nice if Santas might think to enquire of children what generous thing they intend to do for another is before the inevitable superhero tat is handed over. Certainly that's what I intend to do when the salt has finally taken over from the pepper and the dad bod has been promoted to a granddad bod.
Wherever you are I wish you, your family and loved ones a very happy Christmas.
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