Christmas Traditions
To many, the preservation of Christmas traditions is of the utmost importance. For example, one of my most-cherished family traditions is watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation around a box of pizza. However, I’ve learned over the years that sometimes you have to let old traditions go and start new ones (like building a miniature toy shop with your Lego-obsessed boyfriend). So in honor of starting new traditions, here is a list of new traditions at the Santa set, and a few of the oldies-but-goodies as well.
New traditions:
- Answering to new a new Head Helper (manager) who smells like Jack Daniels and smokes like a chimney. Someone should tell her that Santa frowns upon smoking chimneys.
- Enforcing a new personal photography policy. “Yes, ma’am, you may take your own photos but you may not stand in the red-carpeted area, you cannot use your flash, and no, I do not know how to turn the flash off on your camera.”
- Wearing an apron without pockets. Where am I supposed to keep my Candy Cane chap stick?
Age-old classics:
- This exchange between Santa and me: Me - “Okay now everybody say cheese!”, Santa - “She’s from Wisconsin. Can’t you tell? All she can talk about is cheese. Next time let’s say ‘cookies’!”
- Snapping photos of toddlers who are so deathly afraid of Santa that they silently scream for a worrisome 10 to 15 seconds until they suddenly inhale sharply and then really start to let the decibels loose.
- Feeling sorry for myself because my 4-year Philosophy degree has brought me to this. I’m a Christmas elf who can’t get a full time job to save her life or her holiday sanity.
