Dear Kid,

To all those who are celebrating, Merry Christmas.

To those celebrating the holiday of I Ate Too Much Chinese Food last night, happy that too.

To those traveling, travel safe.

To those at home, enjoy.

To those seeing family, enjoy.

To those seeing friends, enjoy.

To those taking care of other people’s puppies, thank you.

To those working today, thank you for taking care of the rest of us.

To those not working today, enjoy your day.

To those being dragged places by their parents, thank you for your patience and your good attitude.

To those doing the dragging, thank you for your patience and your good attitude.

To those being separated from their electronic devices for some or all of the day, you’ll survive–I promise.

To those doing the separating, excellent!

To those who let me sleep slightly later today, thank you.

To those playing Boggle today, good luck.

To those playing Boggle against me, bring it.

And to everyone, happy today.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Dad and I went to the crafts fair at the high school yesterday. As always, it was mobbed and various school bands and orchestras played in the background. (Stick with me, you’re going to like this one.)

We wandered around looking at various crafts, purchasing a few pieces of jewelry, sampling various homemade yummies, and basically having a good time.

My friend Ann was there selling chocolate covered treats (hi Ann!).

Near the end of our wanderings, we rounded a corner and I said, “Oh, my.”

The two ladies sitting at the table burst into laughter. “That’s the best response we’ve had all day,” one of them told me through her giggles. It must have been my tone of voice. Or possibly the reaction they’d gotten from other visitors.

The thing is, they were selling spiders.

Yep, spiders.

And you know how I feel about arachnids.

But these were glittery spiders and they came with a story (an 1800s German folk tale to be precise). A little bling and a good story go a long way in my book.

I’ve lifted the pix from their website (visit it here) because I took a great shot of their table that came out as nothing but blur. (We’ve discussed how not-good I am at photography. Where’s Beth when you need her?)

Here are the photos:

And here is the story (which makes the spiders much, much better):

Once upon a time (because all the best stories start that way), a mother was busy cleaning her home for Christmas. The spiders (not being stupid) skedaddled (not a German word) out of the way of her broom and up to the attic to hide. Apparently, the mother wasn’t too concerned about the cleanliness of the attic. Truth be told, neither am I.

When the house was quite, the spiders slowly crept downstairs to see the beautiful tree. (Ooooh, ahhh.) Being excited and being spiders, they scurried up the trunk of the tree and out each of the branches.

This suggests that there were more than the usual number of spiders but since this is a fairy tale we shall overlook the mother’s infestation and move on.

The spiders were filled with happiness at being in the tree and it leaked out in the form of spider webs. The spiders spun and danced through the night, leaving their webs everywhere.

At his appointed time, Santa showed up with gifts for the children. (Can anyone explain how he manages to scoot up and down chimneys without getting soot anywhere? Dad can’t even come in from outside without tracking mud into the house.)

When Santa saw the tree covered in spider webs, he smiled at the happiness of the spiders. Apparently, he was a fan of the eight-legged. But he knew that the mother would be upset if she saw her beautiful tree covered with dusty webs (not sure how they got dusty so quickly, but in this story, they did). So, being Santa and therefore being magic, he turned the webs into silver and gold.

The tree sparkled and shined and was even more beautiful than before (well, duh–if you had magic silver and gold all over you, you’d sparkle and shine too).

And that’s why we have tinsel on our trees and why every Christmas tree should have a Christmas spider in its branches.

I told you it was a good story.

Love, Mom 

Dear Kid,

Once upon a time, there was a little reindeer with a cold. Because he blew his nose all the time, it turned very red and almost glowed.

That’s not the real story.

Once upon a time, there was a Viking named Rudolph. Because of the color of his beautiful beard, he was known as Rudolph the Red. On one trip he visited Santa at the N. Pole and people used to say, “Rudolph the Red Knows Reindeer.”

Not the real story either.

Once upon a time there was a rabbit with a red nose and …

Nope. Still not the story.

Once upon a 1939 there was a big department store called Montgomery Ward. They asked one of their copywriters to create a children’s Christmas story that they could give away to all the children who came to visit Santa. Rudolph (other name options considered were Rollo and Reginald) was a huge success.

After several years and several million copies of the book, a major publisher asked Montgomery Ward for the rights to the book.

In an act that defies modern business practices, somehow Bob persuaded Montgomery Ward to give back all the right to the book back. Seriously. And Bob got rich. Then Bob’s brother-in-law (Bob was remarried by then) wrote the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. A lot of celebrities didn’t want to record it, but Gene Autry (he was a famous singing cowboy in those days) recorded it and it sold more copies than any other Christmas song (except for White Christmas which is the perennial Numero Uno on the Xmas List).

Happy Reindeer.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Time to get in the Holiday Spirit!

Whichever spirit you happen to wish to get into.

Whether it’s out loud or silent.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Merry Christmas and I hope no one you know found coal in their stocking this morning.

There are some people I’ve never met (but whom I have read about) who could probably use some coal as a wake-up reminder. With a note. Maybe “Hey! Pay attention!” or “No more insanity, please” or “It’s time to compromise and get some work done.” Or something like that.

I also hope that the US athletes got an extra helping of speed and strength in their stockings. Yes, I’m already thinking about Sochi. Just in case you weren’t sure, the Winter Olympics (2014) will be held February 7-23. I don’t have tickets, but you can join me (virtually—you still need to go to classes) for the occasional TV viewing.

Which raises a very interesting question. How do you allocate time between classes, studying, and watching the Olympics when you’re at college?

In general, this only happens once during your college career. The summer Olympics shows up (conveniently) during the summer when the majority of college kids are not in school. Other mega sporting happenings are often one-day events (like the Super Bowl and the National Mud Wrestling Championship) so they only eat into your study time for a short window. But the Winter Olympics are An Event and if you let yourself you could easily sacrifice an entire semester to cheering on the downhill skiing hopefuls.

Therefore, Being the Kind of Mother I Am, I want you to know that I shall be providing Insight and Commentary on the Winter Olympics (2014) so that you can easily and quickly get a short summary and not have to sacrifice more than a brief moment of Bio II to keep up with the news. You’re welcome.

To all those celebrating, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Peace and Happiness throughout the Year.

Love, Mom

Want to give DearKidLoveMom.com a present? LIKE us on Facebook!