The Great Santa Debate

With Halloween and Christmas fairly close together, I've found myself defending my choices as a mother lately. We don't celebrate Halloween, we don't do the Santa thing and the Easter Bunny never drops foil wrapped cheap chocolates at our house.  I've also never chanted, "I do believe in fairies!"

Its amazing how much people will attack your parenting skills, especially when you live a life that is fully immersed with an online presence. Apparently, since I welcome discussion on topics I'm also fair game for angry emails, DM's and even Facebook messages.

Today I received an email saying "You are robbing your children of everything that is magical and wonderful about childhood. To keep them from believing in Santa who only does good things is akin to abuse, you're just setting them up to be beat up on the school yard."

Have to admit, I didn't realize that I was abusing my kids. Call the cops, why don't ya?

As anyone, I have deep and thoughtful reasons for my beliefs. When it comes to Santa, what I see is greedy children demanding presents from a dude that doesn't exist. I see parents waiting in lines, stampeding for the years' coolest toy and in one extreme case last week, pepper-spraying fellow shoppers to keep them away from a video game she wanted to buy. I see people maxing out their credit cards, spending money they don't have to make this Christmas the best ever. And after all that, they give the credit to a fictional fat guy with a beard. Seriously?

Now I know the original story of St. Nick, who was a truly great fella. But don't try to tell me you're carrying on his tradition, because if you were you'd be taking your kids out to buy Santa presents for other kids.

So here's what Christmas is like in my house. We have a tree, our turkey dinner and a whole lot of fun. We also have gifts. But rather than bowing to consumerism and buying everything and anything that looks cool, I have a pretty hard cap budget of $80 for each of my children. Last year, they each got a dump truck, a whole bunch of dinky cars and some books. And you know what, I was a pretty popular mom in my house even though they didn't get any fancy electronic games or a talking Elmo doll. But most of our Christmas season, much like the rest of our lives, is spent in the service of others. Christmas morning this year we will go to church and before gifts and family time, we'll go to the hospital to give out Teddy bears and cookies to kids who are stuck in the ER. We'll probably invite home a stranger for dinner. After Christmas dinner, I'll hit the streets of downtown Kitchener with sandwiches, blankets and coats for people who don't even have 4 walls around them, much less gifts.

Your Christmas celebrations may not be like mine and I'm okay with that. I respect you and your traditions. But don't ever, ever tell me I'm a bad parent because I choose to teach my children how to put others before themselves. Someday, they may be the ones offering you a helping hand when you've fallen off your self righteous pedestal.

Can Twitter Buy a Stove?

So the lovely Jodi (aka karmicevolution) and I had a meeting today at ROOF to clear up some final details with our event. We're happy to say that things are moving along swimmingly, we're so excited!

During the course of the meeting Jodi asked Katie, the wonderful and exuberant Program Manager at ROOF if there is anything the shelter needs that we can help them with. Jokingly, Katie tells us their stove died yesterday. Now ROOF runs a program called The Lunchbox where they provide catering for meetings that teaches their kids skills in food preparation at the same time. Along with dinners, special events and other things, a stove in this shelter is a necessity. In unison, we tell her "We can probably do that!"

Fast forward 2 hours and about 20 tweets later, Jodi and I were off to City Appliance in Cambridge who provided us with a very nice refurbished gas stove at a great price.

So thanks Twitter, for once again stepping up to the challenge and helping us meets the needs of this wonderful agency.  The stove will be delivered tomorrow afternoon and once again, the kids at ROOF will be preparing and eating hot meals.

I'm Sorry For Being A Bad Blogger!

I haven't blogged in a while, not because awesome things haven't been happening but because awesome things have been happening at an incredible pace!

The 50 Teens 4 Christmas event is coming along splendidly. We hit a rough patch where we lost some major sponsors and weren't bringing any money in. So Jodi did what she does best, she poured out her heart, she cried, she got angry and people heard, listened and started donating and backing us up. We're happy to say that we now have some sponsors, some money and the event is all planned. now we just need to pack the bags and anxiously await the big day!

I want to give the biggest thanks possible to all of our sponsors and donors. I'm not going to name everyone right now because I'm sure to miss someone, but you know who you are. If you've never had to go to bed hungry, slept in a shelter or the vestibule of a bank, then you may never know how truly you've touched the lives of these kids. On their behalf, I thank you.

Keep watching the #50teens4christmas hashtag on Twitter. We're still in need of some items, mostly hand me down clothes and shoes to set up our shopping area. If you can clean out your closets, get your kids to do the same and pass it on to us we'd greatly appreciate it!

I can't wait until Dec 14 to pass on the awesomeness of the people of Waterloo Region to these teenagers! Thank you all for supporting us!