"Santa, St Nick and Snitch the Elf"

Is there a time of year when there is so much to get done?  With the holiday preparations, the shopping, the baking and cooking?  And is there a time of year when youngsters get as excited as they do, during this holidays season?

I'm not ashamed to admit that, as a young Mom,  I had an arsenal to deal with bad behavior this time of year....and I bet you did, too.  Whether it was caused by a lack of sleep, too much sugar or just the fact that kids can be buttheads sometimes, it didn't matter.   During those trying episodes, I wasn't afraid to call on "The Christmas Trinity" - Santa, St Nick and "Snitch the Elf".

"Santa won't come if you don't behave"...was a  frequent comment in our house this time of year.  I couldn't have been the first Mom to use that tactic, I'm pretty sure.  A song with the lyric "He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake" was around long before I became a Mom.  (And isn't it kind of creepy that we encouraged the belief that some kind of stalker was checking out our kids at night?)

St Nick was the more dignified character (he's a saint, after all!) that was the midterm gauge on how the boys were behaving.  If the boys got an orange, a few pieces of candy and maybe a small toy, like a Match Box car or a Star War's figure,  they knew they were in pretty good stead with the main dude of the season, at least in early December.  St Nick was kind of an assistant Santa.  You didn't want to tick him off, but come on!  An orange?

If that didn't keep the guys in line, our house  had another go-to guy named "Snitch The Elf".  We told the boys that Snitch the Elf was looking in the window and if they behaved that day, a piece of candy could be found on the window sill.  It was pretty amusing to see the boys try to figure out who messed up that day when there were only two pieces of candy on the window sill and we had three boys.  In the end, THEY knew.

It's not like our boys were juvenile delinquents....just normal kids, caught up in the excitement of the season.  But it sure was nice to know that those three Christmas characters had our backs during the most hectic time of year.

And young Moms.  Feel free to borrow any of the ideas.  I mean, after all,  what says Christmas like a stalker, an orange peddler and a Peeping Tom elf?