8 days: Christmas cards. Finally.

Day one of our low-key, relaxing weekend. We slept in, we ate waffles late, we ate lunch late. There was a lot of piano practicing, what the recital being tomorrow, and some baking, for the same reason. My favorite part of the day was munching popcorn and watching The Nutcracker. Calvin loved it.

Every year, about this time, as I'm putting final touches on a stack of homemade Christmas cards, I find myself swearing that next year I will start the project in July. Or at least September. I think next year I might actually do it. For this year we'll just cross our fingers and hope that everyone gets their cards before the holiday. This year the effort involved die cutting, inking, and stamping, and the cat is now red in a number places. It wasn't on purpose. Really.

9 days: Some Christmas baking and a party

We actually don't make annual Christmas cookies. I've tried them a number of times and you know what? I always make a horrific mess with the frosting. As in seriously messy. So I'm waiting for an undisclosed number of years until I think at least one of us will be neat enough for it to be worth while. But in the meantime we get to enjoy the cookies that our neighbor brings us every year (she included a train cookie just for Calvin this year), and we bake other things ourselves. Today it was gingerbread cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting, which we took to the homeschool group's holiday party in the afternoon. Tomorrow it will be gingerbread pumpkin bars for Calvin's piano recital on Sunday.

We had a nice time at the party, making wreaths and swags and indiscriminate pipe-cleaner objects while munching on a myriad of homemade goodies. At home we turned the music up and wrapped a few more gifts while singing at the top of our lungs. While I made dinner Calvin browsed through our newest human evolution book, and we started our new Christmas book before bed. It was relaxing and peaceful, and, except for the recital, we have an equally peaceful weekend to look forward to. It's like the calm before the (enjoyable) storm.

10 days: The man in red

The annual Santa visit. There's the mall Santa, the downtown Santa, the Santa at the Christmas Village, but today we checked out the museum Santa Claus. Henry Ford Museum does Christmas all through the month of December with decorations, a letter writing station, a model train display, and of course a Santa, so that's where we went today.

The train display was pretty, but small compared to the shows we've been to. The actual trains were lots of fun again, though, and the Oz exhibit was a major winner again. The decorations gave the museum a very traditional feel (my favorite? The Wizard of Oz tree), and Santa had a really pretty set-up, plus some pretty cool belt bling.

11 days: Christmas stories

We collect Christmas books. Every year for St. Nicholas Day we give a book to Calvin for us to share together year after year. We write in them each year, inscribing the opening pages with a message of love and a date. We're only up to six books at this point, but we also have a few favorites from our own childhoods that transport us to those early days of Christmas joy.

2006: The Snow Tree, by Caroline Repchuk

2007: The Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Bruce Whatley

2008: Amazing Peach, A Christmas Poem, by Maya Angelou

2009: Good King Wenceslas, by John M. Neale and Tim Ladwig

2010: The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg

2011: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by Charles Santore and the full version, too.

12 days: A letter to Santa

We actually don't do Santa in the traditional sense around here. Years ago (probably around five, to be exact) we talked about the whole Santa thing and decided that we would not create a fictional character, but would just play along see how things went. I have a friend who decided the same thing, and when her daughter asked if Santa was real, she went Socratic and asked her what she thought. For my friend it turned out that Santa is now a fixture in their home, but when I used the same method on Calvin last year, he decided for himself that neither man nor reindeer could fly, and that "magic" wasn't real so neither was Santa. Interestingly enough, I think the commercial availability of toys was another mark against the man in red. The stories, after all, portray him and his elves as portly toy makers, but we all know toys are made in China these days, not the North Pole (another nail in the coffin—the lack of land at the North Pole).

This probably sounds a little bah humbug, and I know some of our family are disappointed by what they see as a denial of childhood magic, but I have come to believe quite the opposite. Calvin loves to play pretend, and I don't need to tell him that the "magic tree house" on our back deck isn't magic at all but just a plastic yard toy. This is something he already knows, and that knowledge has never ruined the "magic" of the game for him. The same is true about his play kitchen, his dress-up clothes, his stuffed animals, and all the games he acts out in his head. They are all part of make-believe, he knows it, and he loves them all the same, perhaps even more so because he loves them for what they are. Similarly, we didn't need to tell him that Santa wasn't real—he got there all by himself—but that hasn't stopped him from hanging a stocking, writing his letter, and begging to visit impersonators in red all over the area.

And it certainly hasn't stopped him from sharing in the magic of the season that is part make-believe, part music, part tree-in-the-house, part twinkling lights, part gift-giving and receiving, and a whole lot of loving family. This is a magical time of year all on its own.

So here we are, twelve days to go and the letter has been written. In fact, he wrote two so that he could keep one in his journal, and we may even get a chance to deliver the second one in person later this week.