Jingle Bells

This morning, as I am trying to stitch up a hole in Emily's pants, I overhear her telling her brother..."Hey Ethan, let's go sing Jingle Bells over and over again to Mommy. She hates that." Now tell me, what did I ever do to that child to deserve that kind of treatment???? So, in my infinite wisdom to try to diffuse the Jingle Bell Hell that I knew was coming, I told her that I didn't hate the song. In fact, I liked the song. Ethan said, "Well, you must just hate it if we sing it all summer long." Okay, I admit that it does start to get to me during June, July and August. I guess they just wanted to make sure that that was in fact the case because they both came in serenading me with "Dashing through the snow..." I just sat quietly and continued to sew and tried not to outwardly cringe.

A short time later we were in the kitchen finishing up breakfast. Ethan announced that there were only three more days left until Christmas. I said, "Yea!!!!!!! Only three more days!!!!!" Under her breath, Emily said, "Mommy is probably just saying that because she wants it to be over." I told her that that was not true. I told her how much I loved the Christmas holidays. I love all of the pretty decorations, and the Christmas carols, and the holiday movies. I told her that even before they were born I used to get so excited every year for Christmas because I just love the holiday. Ethan said that he loves the holiday, too, because we get to spend time together as a family. I asked Emily why she loved Christmas. I sat there inwardly cringing just waiting for her answer. Before she could answer, this was the conversation we had...

I said: You better not say it is because of the presents.

Emily: Well it IS because of the presents.

Me: Emily Lynn! Christmas is NOT about getting presents.

Emily: Did you hear me say it was about GETTING presents? It is about giving presents because every time we give somebody a present it is like giving Jesus a present for his birthday.

And then my beautiful child sat there with a smug smile on her face. This girl is really going to be the end of me. You see, this was a conversation that we had a few weeks ago about Christmas and the meaning of Christmas. We talked about how it was about celebrating the birth of Jesus and how we give presents to each other as a symbol of His birthday celebration. We talked about how much more important it was to give the present than it was to receive the present. And even though my lovely daughter just gave me this wonderful answer about the reason she likes Christmas so much, if I could have captured the smug look on her face during the delivery of her answer, I think a look is worth a thousand words.

Is it too early to start hitting the Egg Nog this morning????