A Boy and His Elf

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I just wrapped up a Lego project involving Lucas's Elf on the Shelf, Awkward. Don't remember what an Elf on the Shelf is? Read this post from last year to get caught up.

Since Awkward "goes back" to the North Pole after Christmas Eve, tomorrow is the last day Lucas will see him until next year. Now as I said in last year's post, by the time Christmas rolls around, we're usually getting desperate for new ideas on where to put Awkward and aren't too sad to see him go. However, I find I'm a little anxious and/or depressed with his departure this year.

You see, Lucas is 8 years old and will be 9 next year. Based on various articles I've read online, a majority of kids stop believing in Santa by age 9 and by 10, it's only about 1 out of 5 kids who still believes. So clearly, the jig will be up soon, if not next year then likely the year after that, and the thought of that makes me sad.

I know there's been some debate in recent years as to whether parents should "lie" to their kids about Santa. I am firmly in the corner of YES, screaming it from the rooftops, in fact, for this particular argument. If I were to name the top 5 things that made childhood magical for me, Christmas and Santa Claus would definitely be at the top of that list. As far-fetched as a lot of it is as an adult, it was wonderful as a child, and if I could, I'd love to still be able to believe that a jolly fat guy in a red suit flies through the night once a year, delivering toys to all the good little boys and girls of the world. So why would I want to take that away from my son?

To an extent, I believe that once a child stops believing in Santa (and Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc), once they give up on that "magic," they have moved on from being children and have started that march toward teenager or tween or whatever comes next. And I'll be honest, I don't want Lucas to be there yet. I still love him as my little boy who looks up to us and thinks we can do no wrong. In my mind, once he moves past Santa, he'll be one step closer to moving away from us, emotionally and socially at first, and then further down the line, physically.

I know I'm probably overthinking the situation (I've been accused of that before), but that's why I sit here late at night, a little bit of a lump in my throat, typing at my laptop as Lucas sleeps and Awkward waits downstairs for what could be their final meeting.

For what it's worth, I fell asleep early so Marilu set up Awkward as you see in the picture below. As you'll recall from my post about Santa's video message a couple of days ago, Santa didn't render his naughty/nice verdict this year so we decided to have Santa send Lucas a direct message so he knows where he stands.

Since I'm typing this right now, I obviously didn't stay asleep, waking around 11:30, a common problem when I go to bed too early. The perils of being a night owl! Wanting to add a little more to Awkward's last night of 2015, I created the following message in front of the basement TV using Legos.

It may be a little hard to read, but it says, "Goodbye Lucas." I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a simple task that I would wrap up in 10-15 minutes. However, Lucas has a LOT of Legos and trying to find the right pieces (mostly small ones) in that massive pile was an ordeal. It ended up taking me over an hour. I'll acknowledge that part of that is because I am just plain awful with Legos, but most of it was spent searching.

Anyway, I hope he appreciates this, and years from now, if he happens to read this as an older kid (or should the blog survive, as an adult), I'd just want him to know that doing stuff like this was some of the best times I've had as a parent: helping to create the magic that makes a child a child.

Back tomorrow (or later today, as the case may be) with Santa pictures.