Hellobee

Since M was born I find myself getting a lot more nostalgic about memories from my childhood. And more so than ever, it’s been so much fun having my parents and Mr. Ice Cream’s parents recount stories of what we were like at M’s age. I’ve been trying to write down all the memories that our parents have been sharing so one day we can share them with M. With Hanukkah and Christmas right around the corner, I thought I’d share a story Mr. Ice Cream’s Mom told me recently about when he stopped believing in Santa. Only 5 years old and he was already analyzing data to solve problems.

Mr. Ice Cream is Jewish but he was one of those lucky kids that also celebrated Christmas (I used to be so jealous of those kids). Every year Mr. Ice Cream’s family would spend Christmas at his Grandmother’s house, which was always fully decked-out for the holiday. Every Christmas Eve Mr. Ice Cream and his sister would leave cookies and milk by the fireplace for Santa. And every Christmas morning they would wake-up to ample evidence that Santa had visited during the night: there would be gifts under the tree and the cookies would be gone, replaced by a note from the Man himself, thanking them for the midnight snack.

Apparently, at age 5, this didn’t sit right with Mr. Ice Cream. His parents said he recruited his sister to collect handwriting samples from all of their relatives staying in the house. His sister, being 3 at the time, wasn’t privy to the mission goal and innocently helped. With Santa’s letter in hand, Mr. Ice Cream carefully compared each handwriting sample and concluded that Santa was actually his Aunt. Of course, Mr. Ice Cream immediately shared his findings with his sister, prematurely ending the Santa game for her—there were no spoiler alerts back then.

Mr. Ice Cream and I still have a couple of years to decide what we are going to tell M about Santa, but I like the idea of mixing Christmas and Hanukah traditions. In the meantime, here is our picture with Santa from this year.

What are some of your favorite holiday stories from your childhood? How to you preserve memories from your childhood?