Walking a Long Mile in Santa’s Big Boots

We had been explaining how Santa was a very busy man with a lot on his mind, what with trying to remember what every kid wants for Christmas, not to mention the latest surveillance reports revealing who has been picking on her little sister and not sharing her toys.

So the 6-year-old sort of narrows her eyes and says she will consult the computer once again, to edit her list. No sense clogging up a wish list, right? Santa could get confused. Better to narrow the odds.

Because how would she feel, really, if Santa did the eeny-meany-miney-moe thing and delivered the colored pencils but then left out Lil Miss Magic Jewels? Thank goodness, Totally Hair Barbie has been on board since the birthday party four months before.

At least Barbie, the plastic tart, never seems to disappoint little girls.

Their mothers, well, that’s something else. This is a realization that starts earlier every year. By Thanksgiving, it’s already beginning to nag. Right about now, it festers. Mothers can get a little, uh, on edge.

Because, my God, it’s really up to me to make sure that Christmas is jolly for one and all.

I’m telling you, the pressure can be crushing, especially in this age of video, where the evidence--or lack thereof--will surely be recorded on film.

What happens if, say, 20 years down the road, my darlings’ attorneys subpoena the home video library to back their claim that their current, um, problems stem from a series of disappointments under the Christmas tree?

Would they have turned out just fine if only Santa had more faithfully stuck to their lists? Could all my years of love and attention just go up in smoke, like so many Yule logs?

And the presents themselves are the relatively minor ingredient in all this holiday feeling of warmth and good cheer.

Except for my annotated shopping guides, complete with convenient catalogue page numbers, I can’t remember anything at all associated with the gifts I received as a child.

But the memory of cookies (pecan squares, et al) and decorations (the little tree with the bubble lights that legend has it, my grandmother bought for my first Christmas when I was a month old) are forever, it appears.

We are talking mood here, that it-feels-like-Christmas kind of deal. This is key for making your holidays grand.

Holiday songwriters tend to play on this a lot, except when they have trouble pinning this feeling down they can let go with a generic tra-la-la-la-la. Mothers are excepted to make it happen somehow.

Fathers, if pressed, may occasionally be useful in picking up some eggnog at the store.

But, then again, there are all types of dads. If your guy enjoys the unique invigoration of a friendly neighborhood outdoor lighting competition--”What’s the matter, Foster, you afraid to make your reindeer jump over that high tension wire?”--his elf quota may already be used up.

So mothers are pretty much left on their own to re-create the warm and blurry stuff of Christmases past.

This, no doubt, is how the likes of Martha Stewart have amassed a fortune offering helpful “suggestions” to women such as myself with more ambition than time. Guilt counts double at Christmas time.

But there are certain constants of which even I am aware. The tree, for one, is important. It must be green, and big, as my husband has learned.

A few years ago, he snuck out (him: gently tiptoed out so as not to disturb my nap) and bought a tree on his own. When I awoke, I was shocked (him: should have been touched).

There was this puny (shapely) tree in the living room! I tried to be nice (ha!) but in the end, I realized that niceness must sometimes be sacrificed when it is the season to be merry and bright.

I returned it, alone, and bought another on a grander scale.

And I’ve taught my husband a lesson, that’s for sure. For Thanksgiving this year, I picked up a 12-pound turkey to feed our family of four, including two children who start with the cranberries so that after a few bites of white meat they’re bending over and crying that they can’t eat another thing, except for pie.

But my husband is prone to Rockwellian fantasies of holiday tables weighted with gigantic fowl. He dissed my bird as Cornish game and went out and bought his own turkey, of 20-plus pounds.

Last time I looked, we still had some around.

Hey, wait a minute, maybe for Christmas dinner? I mean, of course, with a nice sauce. It could cut down on time better reserved for more important things, like pressing holly to enclose in this year’s batch of Christmas cards.

Sorry, Martha. It was just a thought.