Going for the Silver and Gold

Well folks, it's almost here. The Holy Grail in the race to parental immortality - Christmas. Yes, you may know it as the biggest holiday of the year, but as a mom, I think of it as the Olympics of parenthood. Halloween is the qualifying meet, birthdays are the semi-finals and Christmas is the medal round. It is comprised of several events: Cross-Country Shopping, Freestyle Wrapping, High Jump Hiding, Fabrication and Fiction, Decorating - Short and Long Program, Long Distance Shipping and Super Combined Assembly.

Christmas is the holiday that delights children through feats of fantasy and superhuman effort. No matter how well-prepared we are, it's a Herculean challenge that even steroids can't help. Every year we tell ourselves and our families that we're going to scale back, but once the carols start blasting out of the car radio, who can resist the temptation to create an experience so magical that your child will talk about it for decades?

We shop like wild animals hunting our prey. Depending on how late we are, the brain begins to play tricks on us, making us truly believe that our pre-teen daughter will adore an electric potpourri burner instead of the iPod Nano that was sold out. We trample each other in an effort to score the elusive X-Box 360, mistakenly hoping it will buy us a year of complaint-free children.

When the buying frenzy finally ends, we find previously undiscovered crawl spaces throughout our houses in which to hide our bounty, praying that our middle-aged memories won't fail us when we try to find them again. We wrap faster than butchers in a deli with paper that's ugly and standards that lower as the task wears on and the tape runs out.

Our houses turn into elaborate menageries of Christmas trees and ribbons and popsicle sticks glued together in reindeer shapes less we forget that CHRISTMAS IS COMING. We scale ladders and drain pipes and pole vaults in a frightening attempt to make our houses become beacons of holiday spirit and ridiculous amounts of energy consumption.

We spend countless hours in Post Offices and Shipping Stores attempting to get 80 lbs. worth of gifts shipped across the country overnight for less than our monthly mortgage payment.

As the night looms closer we weave elaborate tales of Santa and his colleagues - their likes, their dislikes and their ability to consume massive quantities of sugar and milk without going into diabetic or lactose shock. We use our non-dominant hands (or our co-workers) to write disguised thank-you notes to toddlers and gift tags on packages simply in an effort to embellish the ancient ritual.

Once the children have passed out from pre-holiday excitement, we swear like sailors and sweat like pigs as we assemble toys and equipment that have more parts than the space shuttle. We raid our cabinets for flashlight and electric toothbrush batteries when the 24-Hour Convenience Store is found closed for the first and only time all year.

When the morning comes, two hours later, our children loudly whisper and poke and pull and bounce and beg for us to COME AND SEE WHAT SANTA BROUGHT!! And we do. We drag our beaten, battered, exhausted bodies out of bed to gaze with Academy Award-winning surprise at the beautiful sights under the tree.

And year after year, it never fails to make us swell with pride to go through this effort and create this spectacle. Because there is no greater gift to a parent than a child's unbridled wonder and joy on Christmas morning. And for that one pure moment, it was so worthwhile.

Merry Christmas and Peace to Everyone!