Of Christmas Trees and Four-year-olds

Fun.

A Christmas tree with a four-year-old is fun.

Well, if you don't count the seizure-inducing possibilities.

See, we have one of those four-hundred-and-seventy-nine-function tree light strings. You know the type-- there's a little button that you push to make your lights blink according to different settings like "Soft Twinkle", "Gently Falling Snow", "Landing Strip", "UFO", and "Emergency Helicopter". I had it set to some nice, slow gentle twinkling, but then Jonah discovered the switch.

Oh, you should hear the delirious laughter (his) and the migrain moaning (mine).





But still. Fun.

Jonah is at the wonderful age right now where he can understand and enjoy Christmas and all it's about, but everything is still new to him.

All through Advent, we've been talking all about what Christmas means-- why Jesus was born as a little baby and what a blessing our Salvation is. We talk all about it quite a lot, and we sing the song he's learning with his Sunday School class for the Christmas Eve program at church. He understands it all and is happy to hear about it. All the rest --the tree, cookies, presents-- are just gravy to him. It will probably only be this way for this year and then it will all change next year. But for right now, it seems like he doesn't quite remember what we did last year and doesn't expect it. "A tree? We get a Christmas tree? In our house? Wah-hoo!" He didn't pester me about it-- he just accepted it as great fun when we told him we would be putting it up. And then there are presents to go under it?? Even better! We talked all about the symbolism of the tree and lights and presents and he was happy to learn it all.

Yeah. We're definitely having a lot of fun.

Even the part where the Christmas tree get undecorated and redecorated a seventeen times per day.