A Goddess in a Cave in the Woods

A Christmas Story is one of my family’s favorite holiday movies. My Dad loves it. My husband loves it. My in-laws love it. My sister loves it. It cracks everyone up and we can all recite lines from memory. But up ’til now, I haven’t let Max watch it.

Now, we are really pretty lenient about what sort of movies Max watches. We control the quantity part rather strictly, but we’ve been more relaxed about content. I have a friend who doesn’t let her kiddos watch most Disney movies because of questionable themes and messages (it does seem like one-parent households are the norm with Disney), but, honestly, we’ve been lax about stuff like that. Until I discussed the topic with my friend, I didn’t think about the subtle messages or even the overt stuff.

For example, Max loves movies and has been a big fan of pirates ever since riding the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at WDW. So, we let him see the Pirates movies. And, he’s seen most of the Disney movies. Now that he’s five and understanding more of what he sees on the screen, though, we’re definitely screening movies more. A movie rated G is automatically OK, PG is one Mommy and Daddy have to check on, and we’ve told him PG-13 movies are for 13-years and up.

So that brings us back to A Christmas Story. Honestly, I’ve avoided showing it to Max because of the gun topic. We are definitely anti-gun in our household. We don’t allow gun toys, or pretend gun play in the house, and Max knows our views and rules for playing with others. That said, we’ve discussed what guns do, and what they were used for in the past. He knows that some of his cousins go hunting, and he knows that some people choose to have guns. But, he also knows exactly what the rules are in our family.

After taking a family poll (Meemaw, Poppy, Papou, Nana, Oma, Uncle Ernie and Aunt Ker-bear all ayes) and discussing it, we let Max watch the movie with us last night. Needless to say, he loved it. We paused it quite a few times to answer questions, like “what’s a furnace?” And, we discussed the gun issue, and how times are different now than they were when the movie takes place. But it was a lot less dramatic than I thought it would be. In fact, today’s discussion has mostly revolved around “Mommy, that wasn’t the REAL Santa that was mean and stepped on Ralphie’s face, right?”

Sweet Max. I love him so much.

Phase One of the Operation Christmas Preparation is complete – the tree is up. Not completely decorated, mind you, but it is out of the garage and up in the living room. We’ve unpacked about half of the holiday boxes and have a good number of ornaments on the tree.

Actually, this is the earliest we’ve had our tree up in years – I can’t remember the last time we put it up on Thanksgiving weekend. I’m feeling very accomplished after this weekend. We got a lot of cleaning and sorting done, and the holiday stuff should be done in a few days, then we’ll be able to put all of the boxes back in the garage and just enjoy the atmosphere.

We made hot cocoa tonight and watched a Christmas movie. Yay for us. We’ve made a commitment to really enjoy the holiday season this year, instead of getting all wrapped up in the commercialism and shopping craziness. It seems that our strategy is working. I know I feel a lot less stressed than I usually do as December first approaches.

Now to work on those cards….