Got in hot water today. Dalton let his buddies in on the whole Santa secret. Oy. It's just too juicy not too share...I get that. But oh the need to lie to your kid and keep him believing in a fat, red faced old man. It's magic. I think that it became less enamoring to me last year, when we watched the Polar Express movie as a family. Dalton was crying. Really, seriously upset. In the movie, there is a little boy who has never received a present from Santa. I don't get the logic here..because it's not that he didn't believe. It's that he's been poor. But this year is going to be his year. This year he is going to finally get the present that he's been praying for.

And so the questions came spilling out of Dalton's mouth. "Why doesn't that boy get presents?" "Why has Santa forgotten about him?" "Do all the poor kids not get presents?"

Seriously...where's the magic when you need answers to those questions? Yeah...doesn't really make sense does it? Here we give this fat guy in a red suit all of this glory for answering every child's prayer..and turns out- he doesn't. But wouldn't that reality give a child peace? This year, when Dalton found out the truth (thanks to a friend at school with older teenage brothers) he was relieved. Suddenly it all made sense. Santa isn't loosing it. Those kids who are poor aren't bad. There is a reason why some kids have and some don't. It also made a lot more sense as to why his rotten neighbor friends got a freakin truck load every Christmas. There was no sense in that.

So now, when he asks for a ITouch, he gets that it's not that the elves don't like him. It's that Mom and Dad are not going to shell out $300 for an eight year old. And he understands that. He would never expect us to. Elves yes, but Mom and Dad no.

The mother of the boy who'd just had his innocence shattered, asked me if it was traumatic. No. Believing in a big unjust magician who runs around with elf slaves sounds a little more traumatic to me.