Friends in my Christmas Stocking

The other day, I figured that it was time I sit Ellie down and tell her about Santa Claus.

Think for a minute about how bizarre that is. Every other American 2 year old has surely been pointing to signs of the jolly red and white guy and asking who that is, and clearly understands that Santa is the one who brings the presents. And for sure, if Ellie were in the US, that is exactly what she would be doing. She is obsessed with knowing everyone's name--people standing in the checkout lane at the grocery store, people in ads in magazines, all of the minor fish characters in Finding Nemo. But here in Cambodia, there is no Santa, there are no Christmas decorations, and there are definitely no holiday sales. Christmas exists to the extent that we and our friends create it.

So, anyway, it was time to explain to Ellie, from scratch, who Santa was. I don't think she got much of it. "Presents" is a concept that she understood, but "chimney" and "reindeer" were way beyond her. She understands that specific actions are good or bad, but classifying her behavior as a whole as either positive or negative is way to abstract for her. I kept going with this explanation, knowing that Ellie really wasn't getting most of this, when I got to the consequences of being bad. What preschooler has any idea what coal is? Heck, I think I can honestly say that I've never seen a lump of coal in my life and I'm--as Ellie says--"firty".

So I explain about coal, expecting a look of total bewilderment, when Ellie pipes up "And Sam and Nina, too!" because to Ellie, "coal" = her 8 year old friend Cole Buford. And as long as Santa is putting Cole in her stocking, wouldn't he put Cole's siblings in there, too?