Santa and Me

So I am not a father yet but, my Wife and I have been discussing having kids over the last few months. So this time of year got me thinking about what I will tell my kids about Santa. I am an Atheist and my wife is a little more on the fence when it comes to religion and god. With all our talk about having kids I was thinking the other day what will I tell them about Santa Claus and the story of Christmas. I can't ignore the holiday it is just to much a part of society and my family, to not deal with it. I have a few ideas as to how I want to handle Christmas, but it would not be just my kids effected by my decisions. All the kids they know at school would also be subject to my opinions and actions through my kids, and the last thing I would want is to piss off an evangelical mother (done it before, don't want to do it again).

This is such a touchy subject as a atheist living in America.  Many people view us as a horrible group who have nothing better to do then get mad over the smallest mention of god.  So I am looking for input from other as to how to handle this situation.

Now lying to my kids I have issues with.  However, at the same time, I don’t want my kid tell all the other pre-school kids or their kindergarten class that Santa is not real and ending up with a bunch of angry phone calls.  So I am not sure how to handle this part yet.  I think I will deal with this by leaving the interpretation of the reality of Santa up to them.  Leaving the story ambiguous enough for them to try and draw their own conclusions and let the little imagination take control.  I know by second grade though I was 90% sure Santa was not real and I had folks who use to ring bells in the middle of the night to make us think he was in the house unpacking gifts.  So this is something that I will not have to deal with for too long.

Next would be the story of Christmas.  Now the Santa story is free enough from the Jesus birth story that I can easily separate the two explaining to my kids that Santa is/was a man that gives/gave presents to good children and we celebrate this on December 25th.  And later when they are older and more able to understand explain the Jesus story and why it is tied to Christmas, and where I stand on organized religion.

My biggest goal in all of this is to allow my kids to live a normal life without sacrificing my beliefs or their childhood in the process.  I don’t want my kids when they are older to feel like I took something from them growing up.

Centro CNY

Well since pownce.com is closing down on the 15th I think I will resurrect this blog.  I also believe I am going to revamp the blog and get away from the whole bitch and moan direction this started out in and maybe make it a credible blog that contributes to the web in some way.  Perhaps even post on a regular schedule or at lease more frequently then once every few months or once a year.

But before I do that one more rant.  Then I promise to clean up my ways.  This is a good one I promise.  So Thursday I was going to take a Centro bus into work early because I had a timed experiment that I needed to be ready to work on at 7am so I go outside to catch the 6:11 Bus from by my house to work.  Well 6:20 roles around and no bus.  Thinking I got the time wrong I walk back to my house to check the website to make sure I was right.  Well I was but I also checked and saw the next bus comes at 6:35 so afraid I was late getting to the bus stop I go back outside again to try and catch the new bus at 6:27.  By 6:50 I still have not seen a bus and now worried that I will ruin my experiment I go to my car and drive in and pay for parking at the garage $20 for the day.  I was also 20minutes late to get started, but the experiment works so I was happy about that. Now I chalked this up to a bad day maybe the bus was just running behind or something, I really thought nothing of it till today.

Again I was going to take the Bus into work.  My carpool was either on vacation or just not working today so I figured I would take the bus.  So I again check the website this morning for the bus times and find one at 7:39 that picks up by my house and still not sure if the bus was early or late on Thursday I went out at 7:25.  Now it was 6 degrees this morning.  And waiting at the stop I was freezing.  But I stood there till 7:50 waiting for the bus but nothing.  When I finally gave up because I could no longer feel my ears I had to scramble to find a ride in.

Once at work I called Centro concerned that the bus was no longer passing by my house in the morning and the website had not been updated yet.  What I was told however was that the bus was still running and that it is usually running 10 to 15 minutes late.  Now this is an express bus and I am trying to pick it up at the second stop so I can only imagine how bad it must be at later stops.  What gets me the most about this though is if they know the bus is regularly behind 10 to 15 minutes why do they not just fix the schedule to reflect that so that I am not stuck outside for 25minutes wondering where the bus I was trying to catch was.  Or am I just crazy.