Samichlaus and Spiderman
Both names start with the letter "S", but that is probably where it stops.
On December 7th, Huxley helped me bake a Grittibänz to honour Saint Nikolaus (Samichlaus in Swiss German), which we should have done on the 6th, but because I felt very un-saint like, I did it on the 7th. Even though in Europe/Switzerland, Saint Nikolaus is also a commercial venture, I still think it is much less so than the Santa Claus we have here in Canada.
I find one of the most disappointing things about Santa Claus is his excessive appearances–the mall, almost any event that is Christmas related, parades, etc. How can a child still have reverence for the man being seen everywhere? And how, can he be away from his place of work (i.e. the North Pole and his toy shop) so much at this busiest time of the year? Okay, he has elves that know what they are doing… But I wonder… doesn't it seem that it must be Mrs. Claus that is the real force behind the business, the one keeping the elves in check, ensuring everything is running on schedule, in other words, getting everything all done, with the man always absent on publicity tours…
Overall, we try to keep Huxley away from all the Santa events, except going to the Mall to have his picture taken, because we've done it since he was a baby, and every Christmas, we haul out all the sequential pictures and add the newest one. It's a wonderful way to see how Huxley has changed over the years. Then there is the fact that with DH being Canadian, Santa is what he can relate too, and it is what he wants to share with his son. A real conundrum, since for me, it has no meaning, but then I live here now, and there has to be a fine line of having both traditions and overloading Huxley, and selecting which ones are important to us.
Spiderman, eh?… Well, Huxley goes to a Waldorfschool, and we don't expose him to any commercial media. We have a TV and a DVD player, but no commercial television. If there is something important on, i.e. key speeches by the government or world events, we go and visit with our neighbour who has a TV. I love the old-fashioned notion of doing that. It builds solidarity and friendship with our neighbour, and we are not in a vacuum when receiving news. Huxley of course does not attend these things yet. So how does he know about Spiderman? Well, when he went to the local home-daycare, one of the families also attending had their boys (2 and 5) talking about superheroes constantly. This was also a reason why we were so happy that we found a way to have Huxley attend the Waldorfschool exclusively. His play has changed so much and become so imaginative since he is there. Yet, every so often, he had expressed a desire to own a spiderman.
In yesterdays advent calender, his daddy had put a note that we were going to have a bubble bath. A tub full of foam. I figured, that the cheapest bubble bath would probably have the most foam. For a one or at the most two time event, it will not harm Huxley to bath in a mixture of chemicals I generally don't allow in the house. Hence when we where at the store, he notice the Spiderman on the bottle of bath stuff, and I figured, okay, let him have it, so it doesn't become that forbidden thing that he will pine after. He had a lot of fun, and I convinced him after the bath, that Spiderman was a bath toy, and had to stay in the tub. I was already prepared for tears and arguments, but Huxley just said, okay. The bubbles where a disappointment though, I put about half the bottle into the water, but this was not the bubble bath like I remember it from my childhood.
So that is the story of how Spidey-man came to live at our house.