My 1^st-grader has been to more classmates’ birthday parties than I ever went to — in all my 17 years of schooling. And way more extravagant ones.

When I was a kid, every classmate’s birthday party was in an unfinished basement with folding chairs and Pin the Tail On the Donkey. And a jumbo bag of pretzels. Clearly either I was a deprived child, or times have changed.

These days, the child’s birthday party has become an annual bar mitzvah, and everybody is expected to have one.

The ritual requirements include a special venue or a special theme. Or both. This year we were stumped for either.

While we’ve always wanted to go retro and host at home, we simply couldn’t reconcile ourselves with the idea of ten or twenty kids and their parents tramping through our house in January with all the drippy coats and slushy boots and mounds of hats and scarves and mittens. Because this ain’t LA here, folks; this is Chicago. There is always snow in mid-January. Three years ago, fully two feet of it fell on the very morning of the party. It was a princess party. Picture a line of little Cinderellas in parkas and hip waders.

So, first, we needed a venue that was not our house. And not overdone already. Like Chuck E. Cheese (though, cheesy as it sounds (and is), Chuck E. does make it easy for parents to throw a party kids will like, even if it did take us a week to get our hearing back), or the big bounce-house emporium that we’ve been to at least 20 times. My wife has always loved the idea of a party at that cute little cooking class where the kids all get to make their own cake or pizza or Tartelettes de Framboises au Mascarpone. But we had too many kids to fit there.

Then we had a real brain wave. Go to the movies! At least two theaters near our house stage birthday parties for kids. One even has a dedicated party room.

All we needed to do was check to see what would be playing and if it would be kid-friendly, then give them a credit card number over the phone. Except there was a problem. They wouldn’t be able to tell us what was playing until

the Monday or Tuesday before the party, leaving us five days to get invitations out, RSVPs back, and all the other preparation you need to do with an actual head count in advance. Oh, and if it was all slasher flicks that week, we’d be up a tree without a chainsaw.

But we did not give up easily. It occurred to us that the specialty (read, artsy) theaters schedule features weeks, even months, in advance. Within minutes, I had found one showing a cool outer space movie that our daughter would love! On her actual birthday! It had never-been-seen-before footage shot in space too. How perfect.

Okay, it might come off as a little pretentious when the other parents opened an invitation for their six- or seven-year-old to attend a 90-minute documentary film about a Russian space station at the local art house cinémathèque (the theater’s word, not mine, so you know I’m not kidding). But I really thought it was our best option at the time.

Until we saw the line in the listing, “In English and Russian with English subtitles.” Deal breaker. Some of the first-graders are still struggling to read “c-a-t.” Imagine a baffled group of seven-year-olds in foreign environment, watching a foreign film for way longer than their normal attention span and trying to make sense of the little white letters on the bottom of the screen that read “magneto-flux phlegmometer.” In Russian.

Nope. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Finally, with less than two weeks to go, we stumbled upon an art studio only three or four blocks from school that did art parties for kids, and by some miracle they had an opening when we needed it. They would even provide the goody bags, and the price would be even less than going to the movies.

We just had to bring some pizza and cupcakes and fairy wings for all the girls, and we were good to go. As a bonus, since we bought the cupcakes at the grocery store (cheap) instead of going to the fancy bakery for a cake (expensive), the fairy wings were effectively free.

Best of all, I loved the look of this place. It was exactly like somebody’s unfinished basement!

What joy. My younger daughter is now nearing the magic age of four, where deliciously absurd things roll off a child’s tongue. Her older sister was a master of the art. Unfortunately I was so busy wrangling her one-year-old sister that I was unable to capture but a few of them. I seriously contemplated recording them to publish as an iPhone app. I’d be so rich now that I wouldn’t need this blogging gig.

But anyway, maybe little sister will follow in those footsteps — and let me capture them. I got lucky enough the other day to scribble this one down. It’s a promising start.

“I want a pet when I grow up, but not a dust bunny, because those make me cough. “

“Tell God I said hello.”

It had been only a few days since we’d returned from a week in a different time zone. Our sleep clocks had not yet been reset, so everyone was sleeping late. Except me. I had somehow gotten up in time to make myself look presentable enough to represent the family alone at church. And my older daughter was requesting I give God a shout-out from her when I got there.

There was something charming about it. Until she repeated, “Tell Him I said hello.” That’s when I stopped her.

“I’m sorry. What do girls say?”

A few years ago, when she was younger but just as precocious, she asked me if God was a He or a She. One of those vexing questions kids ask. Thinking fast on my feet, I said, “Both. And neither.”

Yes, that’s confusing to a three-year-old, let alone an adult. But I went on.

“I think boys should say ‘He’ and girls should say ‘She,’ because it’s a good way to remind ourselves that God is in each of us.”

For a while, it took. And I was feeling pretty good about my armchair theological prowess.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not deliberately Progressive. I don’t have that issue. I stay home to take care of the kids because it’s practical. Meanwhile, my wife goes out to be a role model for millions of girls in this state for the same reason. It’s practical. It’s just what she does. We’re not on some 1970s feminist crusade.

We are also amply aware, and totally accepting, of the fact — FACT! — that kids can’t be bamboozled by political correctness. If you try to raise a boy to play with dolls, he’ll do it, all right. He’ll do it by pointing the doll at people and going, “Pow! Pow! Pow!” Similarly, if you give a baby girl nothing but toy trucks, she’ll play with those too. She’ll arrange them neatly in a circle and start serving them tea.

I know all this. Everybody knows all this. And I’m not Progressive. So, when I said, “What do girls say?” why was I so crestfallen when, instead of remembering my brilliant exegesis on the gendered pronoun for God, my precocious young daughter said, “I think God has a wife”?

“…for school to start again!”

When I was little, I never understood that line in the song “It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas.” I do now.

So, to preserve what little I have left of what may be called sanity, I will be taking a blogger’s break until the kids are back at school (The ninth??? Oy!) and I can get back to the comparatively vacation-like thing I call work.

Happy New Year, and…

So the question still hanging from Monday is, how does one 1700-year-old guy in a red suit slide down the chimneys of hundreds of millions of homes in one night and deliver toys to hundreds of millions of children and know each one by name?

In short: Is Santa Claus real?

The short answer is, yes. The long answer is, well, longer.

We’ve covered the story of the very real and historical St. Nicholas. And you hopefully remember your own experience of Santa Claus and the mysterious presents left under the Christmas tree. But did you learn the lessons that were wrapped in those gifts?

Do you remember how you felt the first time you saw a present from Santa? Excited? Overjoyed? Amazed that someone so larger than life, and who you were maybe a little afraid of, would give you something wonderful, something you actually asked for, even when you weren’t always good?

Yes? Perfect! You have learned the first lesson of Santa Claus. Yes, it’s just that simple. He wants you to know how it feels to be excited, overjoyed and amazed — and loved and appreciated.

Next, do you remember how it felt when you gave your first Christmas present to someone else? Excited? Amazed that you could make someone else feel as overjoyed as you did to receive a present? And did you wonder maybe if this was the way Santa feels — and why he does what he does?

If so, then you have learned the second lesson. When you practice giving and receiving year after year, you grow to learn how humble acts of generosity makes life more — oh, what’s the word? — merry. Like it often is in December, when people hold doors for one another, smile at strangers or wave off minor debts. When people act as if Santa Claus was watching them. And feel better for it!

This is what we call Christmas spirit.

It’s no more than living the age-old lesson of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It brings peace and good will, just as the angels brought to those shepherds in the field 2000 years ago, in the original Nativity scene, proclaiming tidings of great joy to all people that unto them a child was born and lying in a manger.

You’d think these simple lessons would be easy to remember, but kids need to be reminded of them — in dramatic ways. For that matter, so do adults.

We don’t have angels showing up every year to fill us with awe, so we found elves and reindeer and a hundred other traditions.

Best of all, we found Santa Claus, the very embodiment of Christmas spirit, dressed up in a red suit.

These traditions have been kept alive, in part, by a society dedicated to preserving his secret throughout our ancestry. After 1700 years, it is still alive thanks to us. We are the Secret Ancestral Nativity Tradition Associates of Claus.

S.A.N.T.A. Claus.

No one person could deliver presents to the whole world in one night the way Nicholas delivered them to his village. It takes millions, hundreds of millions, in every village — people who embrace his spirit and pass on his lessons from generation to generation.

And when a child has sufficiently learned Santa’s lessons, it is the parents’ honor to nominate that child to be one of his associates. To become S.A.N.T.A. and to pass down that Christmas spirit to future generations.

So is this Santa’s Secret? That his work is done by mothers and fathers and grandparents and aunts and uncles and older brothers and sisters and friendly grown-ups everywhere around Christmastime?

No.

Santa’s Secret is much simpler and, sadly, harder to grasp for very long. It is the simple message that loving others as you wish to be loved makes every day Christmas. And that you are always loved, even when you don’t feel you deserve it. These are the lessons we want children to learn. And it takes us all, every one of us, elves and reindeer included, to teach that lesson.

And, of course, angels and that infant in the manger, in whom our founder Nicholas believed.

We say we believe in someone when we support what they do. In S.A.N.T.A. Claus, we believe in Santa with all our our hearts and minds and spirits. So we continue Nicholas’s work.

We — you — are Santa Claus. And we act with the full authority and name of St. Nicholas. Let us wear that name well. And proudly. All year.

God bless you. And merry Christmas… Santa!

Click here for the high-res PDF.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of being honest with children. It is no less important to teach them the value of honesty. And to model what you teach.

That’s why it shocks me that so many parents tell their children the most appalling lie — particularly at this time of year, when goodness is supposed to count more than any other!

Yes, it shocks and saddens me that some parents say that there is NO Santa Claus.

For the record, I am absolutely not joking. There is a Santa Claus. He is very real. Literally, figuratively, any way you slice it.

Children deserve to know the truth about Santa Claus.

I mean, who else do you suppose is responsible for those presents under the tree? What? You say you bought them?

No, no, no. I said, who is responsible? And, sorry, but it isn’t you. You didn’t just suddenly have this brilliant idea the exact same moment a couple billion other people did. You didn’t wake up one day and go, “Hmm, I think I’ll put a tree up in our house and scatter some toys under it.”

No, sir. No, ma’am. Those presents are under that tree because of one person. Santa Claus. Okay, Jesus too, but Santa really gets the credit for this particular aspect of Christmas. He’s the one who started this tradition to honor the Nativity of Jesus.

He did it to teach us something which would lead us into the greater wonder of the Nativity. And, yes, the flying reindeer, the elves and all the rest of the Santa traditions serve a purpose in that.

The exact purpose, however, needs to be kept a secret from children — until they are ready to comprehend it. When they’re ready, learning Santa’s secret can, and should, be one of the proudest rites of passage for a child.

Kids who learn his secret never ever have to leave their “Santa years.” Santa Claus, in fact, only becomes more real.

Not that he was ever not real. Just open a history book!

Why, yes, that’s probably the best way to begin, by taking a look at Santa’s historical origin.

Way back in the fourth century, some 1700 years ago, before he was called Santa Claus, there was a man called Nicholas. Well, Νικόλαος, if you want to be a stickler. He a wealthy man known for his extreme generosity. He became a monk and later a bishop in a town that is now part of Turkey.

He had a reputation for giving toys to the children, mostly poor children. And, for whatever reason, he had a habit of doing it anonymously — to the children’s great delight and wonder.

The most famous of his gifts were not toys though. They went to three sisters, daughters of a nobleman who had lost his fortune. Without money, he was unable to pay the customary dowry for each of his daughters to marry. As the story goes, he was so desperate, he contemplated selling them into slavery. Or worse.

But Nicholas saved them from that fate — anonymously, of course. It was said to be on Christmas Eve that he came to their house by the cover of night and slipped each of them a bag of gold, enough for a dowry. How he got the bags into their house remains a mystery. He may have tossed them through the window, he may have tossed them down the chimney. But, so the story goes, at least one of the bags ended up in a stocking left to dry by the fireplace. The girls all had dowries and could get married. And a tradition was born.

Several, in fact. Santa coming by night, sneaking in through the chimney, leaving presents in the stockings. But most of all, the tradition of the Christmas present.

These gifts created a tangible connection to the first Christmas, the Nativity. Not merely by mimicking the Magi, but by providing a practical sense of what it’s like to receive something unearned — and yet deserved in the unconditionally loving mind of the giver. It inspired awe and gratitude that children still feel each Christmas morning.

Largely because of these things, Nicholas was declared a saint. And his fame spread around the world where he would be known by many different names: Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas, Santa Claus. And children learned to expect stockings filled with toys and hearts filled with joy every year.

But as the years mounted, and their understanding of all things grew, they would begin to wonder. How? How could one man achieve such wonders in one night? Even accounting for the 24 time zones?

There are two answers to that question. One is the truth. The other is a lie, even if those telling it believe it is literal fact.

Those of us who know the truth have been entrusted with the duty of sharing that truth with our children when they are ready to know it. Santa’s secret.

The problem is, it is a secret designed to be passed down through families. An ancestral gift. In too many families, however, it has been lost.

Since this is a parenting blog, I have been given the dispensation and honor to restore that ancestral knowledge.

But with this caveat. No uninitiated children are allowed to read it.

So prepare to read it in secret on Friday, when I complete this post, under the expressed authority of Santa Claus.

Or, for the more literal minded, S.A.N.T.A. Claus.

I’ve written about my unlikely family circumstance before, so this may not be news to many of you. You see, my closest family members have jobs with real honorifics like Honorable and Excellency — not phony ones like “Captain.” They spend their days making Important Decisions and being Respectable, while I run around with kids and try to write jokes that don’t offend my more reputable wife and brother.

Other than the constraints this puts on me as a humorist, it sometimes makes me feel… well, kind of lowly.

But there are other times, too, like last week.

My wife had gotten the girls an “Elf on the Shelf,” which, if you don’t know, is a gazillion-dollar idea that must be making every day Christmas for the people who created it. Anyway, you are supposed to give your elf a name. Any name you want. Most kids give it a boy’s name, but my girls, who always have to be different, gave their elf the name Violet. Remember that name, because Violet, according to the book that comes with the elf, reports to Santa every night.

Naturally, this got the girls all excited to go see Santa in person. Now, now, now! So, at the first opportunity, I put them in the car and drove out to a mall in the suburbs where we found our way into the Santa line.

The Santa there had a real beard, real hair and real belly, which made him look altogether real. But at a high-end mall, you’d expect that from a Santa.

When it was our turn to see him, he walked up to the girls and said, “Rebecca? Lucy? Is that you? Why, you’ve grown so much since last year!”

Okay, big deal, right? Lots of mall Santas have elf helpers who get the kids’ name from the parents and pass them along to the big guy.

But the next thing out of his mouth was, “Violet has been telling me so many good things about you lately.”

Violet??? Did he just say… Violet?

Pop! The girls’ eyes snapped wide open. Santa knew the name of their elf! Clearly this was the Real Santa!

They’ll believe until they’re 30.

Magic, right? Nope. Captain Dad knows people in low places. Like the mall. The guy with the beard is a guy I know from a writing workshop (held in the same room I drew for last week’s workshop cartoon, by the way). For the last couple Christmases, I’ve slipped him an email with personal details to instill my children with the wonder of the season.

Oh, yeah. Who da man? Captain Dad, that’s who.

My wife may know the President, my brother may know the Pope. But, me?

I know Santa Claus.

Experts say that you’re supposed to read to your child for fifteen minutes a day. I am ashamed to say that we rarely meet that in our house. As hard as I try, we always run over the limit, often by an hour or more. But—

What’s that? You mean the fifteen minutes is a minimum? Oh. I see. Um, well, since I’m clearly an idiot on the subject, this might be a fine time to introduce our very first Captain Dad guest blogger to tell you all about December being “Read a New Blog Month.”

What? Oh, I’m sorry. “Read a New Book Month.” Please welcome Emily Patterson who actually knows about these things.

The Benefits of Reading Are Literally Grand

Written by Emily Patterson on behalf of Primrose Schools, educational day care that enables children to flourish and develop as well-rounded individuals.

One of the key predictors of a successful student is the amount of time spent as a child experiencing the cadence and rhythm of the spoken language while attending to the written word. For many decades educational, linguistic and brain development research has been devoted to studies focusing on reading aloud to children. Parents may wonder when to begin this most important aspect of the child’s learning development.

Even in utero, the developing brain detects movement and sound made by the mother. When a person is reading silently, there is a constant energy that is apparent within the body and the mind, which may be transferred to the baby. Consider reading aloud to the developing fetus any type of material, i.e., grocery lists, the newspaper, magazine articles or a good book. What matters is that there is talk that is introducing the certain method of communication that is reading. Using books on tape can be a wonderful technique to utilize even at this stage.

An infant can focus on pictures and text. Oral descriptions using color words and counting can be started at any time. A parent may be surprised and delighted after many repetitions how a four month old can point out a familiar character. Board books are especially good from infancy to three years of age where the child is experimenting with holding and caring for books. The use of technology can also be employed to help in reading skills. Numerous books can be found on tape or CD to play to a child at bedtime.

It is important to read aloud to reinforce the skills that are being introduced when a child begins school. Making the time to do this is vital in raising an active reader. Robert Needlman, M.D., author of Dr. Spock’s Baby Basics, suggests that one of the most important things about nurturing a reader is to read with a child from a very early age. “There’s no prescription for this, the only prescription is to allow some time each day that you can sit down, connect with your child, and read together. The main thing is to allow it to occur in a way that’s joyful, that conveys enjoyment to the child – from enjoyment the rest will follow.”

You will foster an appreciation of literature when your child sees that you take pleasure from reading a book. Choosing the right books are a key factor in nurturing this very special time together. Ask any librarian or bookstore clerk for those exceptional books and you will discover a wealth of lists ranging from Caldecott Medal Winners to Newberry Winners. Consider adding some of these to the household library. These books have been carefully chosen because of the illustrations and the simple, rhythmic language as well as a moving story line that keeps the child engaged in reading. Make sure to read a book that you enjoy reading aloud as it will most likely produce an animation and enthusiasm that is always appreciated by children. Then too, the favored book is the one that is read over and over again. It is great fun to allow your child to “read” the book. It will probably be all wrong or made up, but in the development of a reader, it is simply a stage called “creative reading” that progresses into true reading ability. Soon they will be “getting it” and the pure joy of reading will have been achieved.

Here are some tips to help families create a literacy rich environment:

• Choose age appropriate books on a variety of subjects.
• From infancy, read daily encouraging participation in the story.
• Oral stories from parents, singing, chants, and nursery rhymes are wonderful ways to encourage literacy.
• Keep a book bag handy filled with favorite books for waiting periods and long trips.
• Ask the teacher for a list of books that relate to what is happening at school. Read them with your child to encourage connections between school and home.
• Allow older children to read aloud to younger children, even if there are mistakes made or the story is not exactly what is on the page. Both children will benefit from this interaction.

A child’s intellectual development is enhanced in a significantly proportional way when reading is made a continual daily exercise in the home. Every child has a built in motivation to please parents, to communicate and to acquire language. It is the parents’ job to encourage that intrinsic desire by supplying the necessary tools to enhance the capacity of the child’s literacy skills. So, find a good book, settle in and read with your child.