1 Mother 2 Another

I know that Christmas comes earlier every
year; on November first Maddie and I saw a blow-up Santa outside of
the local Home Depot. November 1 is the new day-after-Thanksgiving.
I get that. But I still have a hard time with people putting up
trees in November (I say as all my local friends smirk, since most
of them do) so I am steadfastly ignoring this new, artificial
green-light to Jollywood.

We keep the Xmas out of our house pretty
successfully, but cannot avoid a couple things this early on.
Mainly, we’ve been getting boxes ready for Operation
Christmas Child – one of my favorite charities out there, and
so incredibly easy to do with kids – because the boxes have
to be sent off by mid-November to get whisked around the world. So
the girls saw the Christmas trinkets coming in, and one thing led
to another, and the girls began singing Christmas carols.


I quickly put a kibosh on this, shutting down Maddie’s lusty
rendition of “Jingle Bells”. Cora just as quickly
picked up the baton, belting out “No-el, no-el, no-el,
no-E-EL! Born is the king of Israel!”


“Cora,” I said sharply, “I just told Maddie not
to sing Christmas carols right now. It’s not Christmas
time!”


Cora looked at me innocently. “Was that a Christmas carol,
Mommy?”


I gave her The Look. “Yes, Cora. It is a Christmas carol.
Please do not sing ‘The First Noel.’”


Cora smiled angelically. “Ok, Mommy.” And then she
turned away and sang out, “The THIRD Noel . . .”


I need to buy some dumber kids.