Roland and I are not big Christmas-people. We don't go all out and decorate or buy gifts or make a big deal about it. It's become way too commercialized and the meaning of Christmas is lost. Now that we have a child, we're not going to make it a big deal for him either.

So we've had a few discussions around how we will deal with the whole Santa Claus issue. Should we make Santa a part of our winter celebrations? How much of the Santa thing are we going to expose S to?

Last year S had a picture with Santa. I wasn't planning on having it done but we were at the Kids Only Market on a quiet weekday and Santa was reading a story with the kids. There wasn't a line up for photos so we just decided on the spur of the moment to give it a try. So we have a cute photo of a happy S with Santa.

This year I was curious to see if S might do the same so we headed down to the market. We arrived at around 10 but unfortunately Santa doesn't start work until 11. So we checked out the Santa room and played with toys at various stores.

When it got closer to 11, I asked S, "Do you want to see Santa and have a photo with him?" S looked at me with big eyes and that kind of spooked expression. "Nonononononono..." That was fine by me. For the rest of the day whenever I mentioned Santa, S looked at me with that same wide eyed expression. I had to resort to spelling or referring to Santa by one of his other names.

Well, I guess S answered the questions we had about Santa.