Triple The Dad

While the weather here in the Northeast might not be tipping you off, radio music and decorations and such might have given you the hint that we are fully engulfed in another Christmas season. As part of that, my wife and I are having our kids purchase gifts for other members of the family. So on a recent Christmas shopping trip my wife attempted to suss out what the kids might want to buy Daddy by asking them what Daddy likes. They responded with "tea and football." Why? Why do my kids think this about me? Which is fair enough. I do  drink tea pretty much every day and it is football season. But my interests are broad and varied. Broader and more varied than most, in my experience. At first I laughed it off. Kids, amirite? You can go crazy reading the tea leaves behind a four-year old's thinking and logic. But its been a week now and there the comment sits, crouched at the edge of my subconsciousness like some sort of demented Nightmare-Before-Christmas versi...

Happy Thanksgiving. The holiday season is now firmly upon us. Once the turkey settles a little lower in our guts, the football games end and the Black Friday sales start, its Christmas music season again. I get why some people hate it. But our family falls firmly in the love it category: We started listening to Christmas music on Nov. 8 this year. I relish every  Christmas decoration, every advertisement, and every song. No matter how early. And with Christmas song season comes the comedic songs, like Domonic the Donkey, My Two Front Teeth, and every single one of the Chipmunks' Christmas songs. These are mostly fun songs you can feel safe singing with your kids. And then there is Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer ; an awful song with a terrible message about codependency and alcoholism.  Seriously. The entire song is essentially an open letter smearing Santa in the hopes of blackmailing him into a settlement. Sure, there are no overt demands made, but that i...

An Elf so bad at being punctual Santa apparently exiled him. The topic of the Elf on the Shelf came up recently in a discussion with good friends of ours who bought an Elf for their child against their better instincts, fearing that their child would be the only one of his friends who didn't have this tradition.  A kind of "keeping up with the Elveses". To which I said: We aren't getting an Elf on the Shelf. Sorry kids, hate to break it to you, but we're not.. And not because I'm being a humbug.  I'm probably one of the biggest pro-Christmas people you'll ever meet.  My wife and I start with the Christmas movies and music as early as possible. But back to the Elf.  Let’s forget for a minute that the thing looks like a 1950s toy factory reject.  I’m even willing to forgo the whole creepy “he watches us when we sleep” thing because, well, isn’t that what we tell kids about Santa?  Let’s forget all that.  This isn’t a “Christmas tradit...