Thursday, December 22, 2011

Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Being a parent of a six year old, I've been put in a position by "the culture" where I have to deal with three fantasy characters; the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

Even as a child, I could never quite understand the point of the Easter Bunny. The whole idea seemed too bizarre for me. I learned very early on that Easter was the celebration of Christ's resurrection and I couldn't figure out what bunnies and baskets and colored eggs had to do with the Holy Day. The "Easter Bunny" was certainly something I was not going to participate in.

Santa was a different matter. I didn't like the idea of tricking my son into believing something that was pure fantasy, but when he was in pre-K last year, all the children in his class were taught about Santa and he knew for a fact that Santa was real. He believes in Santa without my having told him so and there is no convincing him otherwise, so Santa leaves him gifts under the Christmas tree.

Now, in kindergarten, he has learned of the Tooth Fairy. How much of this he learned from classmates and how much from T.V. is anybody's guess.

His first baby tooth came out yesterday and naturally, he was very excited about leaving his tooth under his pillow. He carefully placed the tooth in a plastic sandwich bag so that the Tooth Fairy would have no problem finding it.

The problem was, however, that I had no coins. When I was his age, my parents the Tooth Fairy would leave a quarter in place of the tooth; thinking about it, with the decreased value of coins since the time when I was six, it seemed like leaving a coin wouldn't be the same today anyway.

So, I replaced the tooth with a dollar bill. I know, that seems a bit extravagant, but when I was seven or eight. my dad would send me to the corner store to buy his cigarettes (this was a long time ago) and in those days cigarettes were 25 cents a pack. Looking at it that way, a dollar didn't seem so much.

When J.P. woke up this morning, he said, "The Tooth Fairy left a dollar instead of a penny".

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