Call me the Grinch. Call me midlife, menopausal or hormonal. Call me whatever you want, but this old mama is packing up her Elf On A Shelf, throwing away her “cookies” for Santa plate and moving on. I am so done with that nauseatingly jovial troll! I am envisioning a whole new Christmas morning. Me in my white satin robe, sipping a cup of French roast, sitting by a crackling fire, my perfectly adorned Christmas tree sparkling, my husband pulling up and surprising me with a brand new shiny black, tan-leather interior Lexus…oh wait, that’s not my life. I think I saw that on a television commercial while I was washing last night’s dishes and burning tonight’s meatloaf. But seriously think about it, Christmas with no sugar high offspring running amok, no piles of torn wrapping paper taking up every corner of the house, no crooked tree covered in broken, handmade ornaments. Sounds great doesn’t it? Yes, a more mature Christmas. I am so ready!

Oh, I see you there; you glittery-eyed, holiday-headband, Christmas-applique skirt-wearing young momma rolling your eyes at this article as you stand in that long line at Target; your cart stuffed full of steroid jacked action figures and skimpily dressed, bodacious Barbies. Well, my little Christmas pixy back in my younger years, I was just like you: intoxicated with holiday excitement and high on the scent of silver pine incapable of processing the horror to come as I blissfully grabbed every freaking toy out there then stayed up into the wee hours of the morning putting them together guided only by instructions written in ancient Aramaic. All of this done in gleeful anticipation of the glow in my children’s eyes as they rushed downstairs on Christmas morning… and then something happened, my kids grew up. Overnight it seems they became teenagers who no longer got up at the break of dawn eager to see what gifts Santa had left behind. Now they can hardly be roused from their beds at all and when they are awake, it isn’t always pretty. Sleep. Sleep and a gift card slipped under their door, that’s all they really want anymore. So you see, Santa’s services are no longer needed here and that is just fine with me. I am moving on…

Except, I still have this one wee straggler. A third grader, that came to me in my irritable older years and it appears she is not yet ready to say goodbye to Santa. She does these things like ask me when that goddamn Elf On The Shelf is coming back, and can we go for a drive to see that house with all of those horrendous blinking lights that I am sure cause seizures, and could I remember to actually buy carrots for the reindeer this year and not just give them the left over broccoli casserole, and can we try to make a gingerbread house again even though we had to use the blow-dryer last year to dry all of the frosting only to have the whole thing cave in five minutes later, and oh, please, please can we go to the mall to see the real Santa because she has a really great list of things she wants, including a toy castle with a million teeny-tiny pieces that needs assembling, the new Cross Fit Superman doll and of course, Hooter Waitress Barbie. So alas, I guess it’s not quite time for this household to say goodbye to Santa. My grownup, peaceful, Christmas will just have to wait but you know what, thank God for that because I don’t even own a satin robe or a Lexus…yet.