I am a Jew, and I love Christmas. I make no apologies for this. I was not raised celebrating Chanukah, and I feel no attachment to this holiday; I never even learned the prayers you're supposed to sing when you light the menorah. As far as I'm concerned, Chanukah is a minor Jewish holiday that has been hyped up to compete with Christmas, and there is no comparison. Christmas is pretty, with beautiful decorations and fun traditions and music that ranges from silly to sublime; Chanukah has some candles that you can't blow out and a boring gambling game involving a little top.
As I've said before, I grew up celebrating the pagan Christmas traditions, and I love to share the joys of secular Christmas with Ryan. I've shown him my favorite Christmas movie - Christmas Eve on Sesame Street - but it seems dated to him, because the characters have changed over the last 30 years (back then, Maria was dating David! And Mr. Hooper was alive!).
Ryan's favorite Christmas movie is Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas. I have to admit it's adorable, and the music is so catchy that we both walk around singing the opening number. For the last month, one of Ryan's preferred activities is a sort of reenactment of the scene where George decorates his tree. Ryan will instruct me to draw the outline of a Christmas tree on the largest paper we have. Before he colors it and covers it with stickers while singing the appropriate song, he insists I make the picture look like Curious George's tree: I must top the tree with a large red ribbon
and a chair.
See, in the movie, George picks out a tree at the farm stand - a tree with a red ribbon on top - but he accidentally knocks over all the pre-cut trees, and Bill's folding chair gets stuck on the top of the tree George wants. The Man with the Yellow Hat can not get the folding chair off the tree, and George will accept no substitute trees, so they go home with the tree as-is.
When Ryan and I went tree shopping this year, it was clear that we would need to get a big red ribbon to go with it. And as I feared, Ryan has also requested a chair. I refuse to put a real, full-size folding chair on our tree, so I've been searching for several weeks for a doll-size wooden chair, or a chair ornament, or something small and reasonably chair-like. I've come up with nothing so far. I thought between toy stores and craft shops this wouldn't be much of an issue. I might have an old toy chair floating around my parents' basement somewhere, but I haven't checked there yet. And I
could make one out of balsa wood scraps, but I have not yet hit that level of desperation.
I have to say, Ryan has been pretty relaxed about this whole no-chair-in-the-tree situation. I expected him to be far more insistent about having a chair, but it seems to be something he'd
like to have but doesn't
need to have. This seems incredibly mature of him.
Anyone out there have any leads on where I can find a little folding chair for our totally-secular Christmas tree?
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Maybe you should get some thick cardboard and scissors and tape and teach your son how to make his own chairs and other Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. Even if the doctors and other pompous authorities say that he is different from his peers, and they want to put him in slow school or whatever, I am sure that he can learn a trade as he gets older. He may turn out to have a lot of artistic talent. And, yes, learning patience and maturity is very important in this world which cannot support too many more high maintenance and spoiled people.