Mother Fluker

A Migrant Mother's Musings

Friday, December 15, 2006

Seeing Santa

That guy is just everywhere at the moment, and up until last Saturday I had managed to avoid him very successfully. Bah, humbug. Well, not really, I was a bit worried about how H would react, as he tends to freak out a bit about stuff like that.

But last Saturday, H's daycare held a Christmas party, and guess who the guest of honour was. Hmmm. A suspiciously slender looking Santa who had clearly been to Weight Watchers since I saw him last. I'm sure Santas are fatter in the northern hemisphere. But then I suppose they can wear padding under their outfits. With Aussie temperatures that might not work at all. Santa could easily asphyxiate, which would be so hard to explain. In fact someone told me that some Santa outfits here come equipped with mini fans and aircon inside to keep Santa's body heat down to humane levels. It sounds believable to me - there's probably some union workplace agreement rule about it, after all, builders get to stop work altogether here if it rains. (Imagine that in Glasgow! The entire city wouldn't exist at all.)

Anyway, as predicted, H was fairly terrified of Santa. But greed got the better of him when we pointed out that unless he told Santa what he wanted, Santa wouldn't know. So he edged up to Santa and sat nervously on Santa's lap repeating emphatically "Toy plane! I want a toy plane please!"

Unfortunately Santa seemed to be a little deaf, and kept saying "What? You wanna go and play? Wanna play?" to him. "No, no Santa, toy PLANE!" I hissed into his other ear. To no avail. Seems there was a bit too much cottonwool in that beard.