My tips for avoiding stress at Christmastime:
1. Avoid the crunch. Spend some time throughout the year buying gifts for the people you love, and also put in the effort in the months ahead of Christmas to be extra annoying so friends/family won’t want you to come to their holiday parties. With anyone who remains on your list, try to spread the celebrations out over as many weeks as possible.

2. Where children’s gifts are concerned: aim low. Tell them that Santa brings good boys and girls a Kit Kat and maybe like a gently used tennis ball or something on Christmas morning. Anything you do beyond that will blow their little minds.

We had decided to do a very simple, low-tech holiday this year. Ohhhhh my gosh it was hard to do. Why is it so hard? All I had to do was NOT do something. Not buy stuff, not wrap it, not wait for the kids to open it all, not clean it up and step on it and keep it out of the dog’s mouth, not wonder why we can’t seem to get out of debt and where are all these toys coming from?? But it was; it was really hard to not. Even though I avoid as much advertising as possible, I couldn’t stop feeling tempted to buy the boys more stuff or more impressive stuff. I worried that the stuff we’d gotten them wouldn’t be enough. I don’t know how many hours I spent walking around with stuff in my hands that I then decided not to buy. A lot. I kept being that awful woman who gets up to the counter to pay and hands half of her basket to the cashier and says “Sorry, I want to put all of these things back. Oh and this. And that’s seven dollars? No, I don’t want it. I mean I DO want it but I don’t want to pay seven dollars for it.”

Luckily, Nicolaus and Graham got some cool non-hippie toys the week before from other family members. Kevin and I are such jerks that we started to be annoyed that noisy plastic branded toys even exist for anyone to buy but then oh my goodness! Graham is so freaking cute hugging his dangerously loud Buzz Lightyear doll. He sleeps with it and carries it everywhere and casually reminds us that “Oh by the way, most Buzz toys are just not real but just so you know: MY Buzz is alive.”

And Nicolaus is so thoroughly geeked out with all of his Star Trek goodies and my gosh, they both love everything that Playmobile makes and man. We cannot deny that toymakers completely know what they are doing.

Seeing how much they loved all of that stuff made it that much harder to stick to my original plan in the few days before Christmas. Especially when I found a giant Playmobile Roman set on sale at TJ Max and a mechanical pteronedon and a bunch of awesome Matchbox playsets annnnnnnd oh man mayyybeeee?? No! YES that is such a bargain they will love it oh my god. No, no. I can always come back. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put this all back for now and then come back and get it tomorrow. Cashiers hate me.

On Tuesday we went to see Santa. They each brought him a little paper doll and a printed out letter which had been dictated to (but not read by) me. That was a joke from a movie. Of course I read the letters. The Stroop effect would make it impossible not to.

Anyhow, their letters are cute so I’m going to be obnoxious and post them here for future reference. There are days when the boys aren’t very cute, so things like this are nice to have on hand.

Hi. My name is Nicolaus. I am obsessed with Star Trek. Do you like Star Trek too? I like to leave snacks for Rudolph. Last year I left little snacks for all the reindeer but I left Rudolph scones.

Bye!
Love,
Nicolaus

Here is Graham’s:
Dear Santa,
Hi. How do you do that and why do you that? I’m talking about making the presents. WHY are you wearing a red suit? Can your reindeer really fly for real?

Love from Graham

Once we were there, Graham pressed Santa with more questions. Nicolaus has total faith though, and does not want to pick apart how it all works. Though he did think it was odd that Santa asked him if he’d been good this year, seeing as Santa is supposed to already know that. Santa was also not aware that we homeschool. Maybe the dude just forgot.

This is supposed to be the post that sums it all up. But I’m not telling it right. Because I don’t know how. We had a dreamy, low-key 24 hours. Kevin and the boys made a gingerbread house on Christmas eve while I made enchiladas, a tradition at my parents’ house. We listened to Vivaldi and ate delicious food together at the table. Graham arrived to Christmas dinner in his underwear but I guess we’re so used to seeing him that way that we didn’t notice until halfway through the meal.

The boys jumped into bed. Nicolaus went to sleep as fast as possible in order to maximize his chances of not seeing any evidence that Santa isn’t real. Graham stayed awake in his bed until midnight in order to maximize his chances of playing with the Egyptian Playmobile set without his brother horning in, until I figured out what he was doing and took the toys away. Then he pouted for one minute and went to sleep.

They didn’t wake up early. Nicolaus crawled between us at 8:00 and went back to sleep. It was nearly 10:00 before he was fully awake and ready to go drag Graham to check out their stockings.

Each stocking contained a tiny jar of bubble dough, a marshmallow lollipop, and a pretty little scroll with a letter from Santa. The letter for Nicolaus explained that a reindeer chewed up the yoga mats for humans, though he did manage to find a little one for Lovie.

Lucky thing Kevin and I bought yoga mats. We didn’t wrap them though because we only bought one roll of wrapping paper. Wouldn’t it blow the whole deal if presents from us had the same paper as presents from Santa? Or are we way overthinking this?

Anyway. From Santa, Nicolaus was level 10 thrilled to receive a box of bird toy parts — enough to make new toys for Lovie for a long time — as well as modeling beeswax.

Santa brought graham some watercolors, an Egypt toob of his very own (I have one, he covets it), and a wooden car transporter from etsy.

I’m forgetting something… what in the heck was it… oh right! Have you seen those little wristband scotch tape dispensers? My kids each got one of those from Santa. They have a lot of taping needs. Oh and! I also presented them with a very poorly constructed felt campfire set.

So yay Christmas. Low-tech but you know, most of their playtime lately is one of four games:
* We are time travelers
* We have a lot of matchbox cars!
* Let’s tape things together and make traps and things out of tape
* We are going camping in our room.

We managed to hit all of those hobbies and even though they would have enjoyed the extra stuff I am so glad we didn’t get them more to open all on Christmas morning. They savored each thing and spent all day playing happily. Several times I heard one or the other of them sigh and say “I love Santa…”

In fact when it was all over, Graham demanded an immediate visit to go see Santa so that he could say thank you. I told him we’d have to write a thank you letter. He said, “Alright. Do that, Mama.”

A few minutes later he asked me what Santa said in reply. Dude, I didn’t text the guy. We’ll WRITE a letter.

“Oh! You mean Email?”

“No I mean we will WRITE it. Like with a pen.”

“Oh! I didn’t know that.”

So that was our week. Now we are packing for a major road trip so we can do it all again with my family. Texas, ho!