Last night, I took Zuzu with me to the fabric store to pick up some red ribbon so that I could transform her Little Bo Peep pinafore into a Little Red Riding Hood apron.
On the way there, Zuzu was chattering about this and that: "Some days I am the Mommy King and Gemma is the Sister Rapunzel"; "Beatrice is coming to my house to trick-or-treat." Then she said, "Mommy, Santa is coming to our house."
I said, "Um, yeah. Santa comes to our house at Christmas."
There was the briefest of pauses, and then: "Well, I'm going to invite him to come for Halloween."
Last week I was making slides for a talk I was giving on the semantics of fictional discourse, with a lot of examples involving Santa. Gwen was helping me troll the internet for images, and when I put in one that had Santa under the slashed-circle "no smoking" symbol, she asked "What does this mean?" I explained that it meant "Santa Claus doesn't exist". She nodded sagely, unperturbed. "But he does at Christmas".
ReplyDeleteMaybe you can convince Zuzu that Santa only exists at Christmas, and thus won't come for Halloween?
OMG. That's a spit take. Love it.
ReplyDeleteG has only ever seen one Santa do to our small townness, so we have consistency at least, but it was super awkward when we went to Disneyland and he walked by. They just happened to be there at the same time. Thank goodness G didn't notice.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin told me the other day, as we were discussing the falling of leaves and them returning in the spring, that Santa will bring them back at Christmas.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Okay. Maybe in California, kid.