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By Root 499 0

on Christmas morning, all children lose what shreds of common sense they might have had the month before. They may spend eleven months of the year jockeying for position on my favorite-child list, but come November 30 they are gaming Santa, even the ones who no longer believe. Like most parents with children hopped up on snowman-shaped cookies and dreams of the latest iPod, Peter and I wield the old fat man like a cudgel. Every other sentence out of my mouth is a shouted “Santa’s watching you!” After many repetitions of this threat, I sometimes have to take myself into the bathroom and soak my face in a sink full of ice water to keep from going insane. Who am I? How did I become this harpy, demanding that my children answer to a fictitious red-and-white executioner?

As if all of the above weren’t enough, in the middle of the month my children are handed over to me for twenty days of “school break,” backpacks now stuffed with “projects” and “homework” to be done during our holiday “downtime.” Because, of course, there is nothing a child wants to do more than spend a vacation working. Talk about a busman’s holiday. Seriously, can we stop with the break projects? Does my six-year-old really need to make a photo collage all about him? Must my ten-year-old sculpt clay figures of middle grass prairie life? Yes, I know that education is an ongoing process and that without my careful tending they will slowly forget everything they have learned in the past few months, but if you’re so worried about them then don’t give them to me for twenty straight days. When the nannies and teachers and therapists all disappear on me, I find myself in the dubious position of having to take care of my own kids. I have to walk away from my career and go on sabbatical, completely and without reservation, in order to satisfy all the sugarplum dreams of this pack of wolves. They have been promised so much by the media and by the world at large that I am nearly blinded by the crush of responsibility. They have to be fed, for one thing, and entertained, for another. Why add algebra?

Because of the exorbitant cost of traveling at Christmas, it has become our habit to head for the local “mountain,” armed with ski passes bought at a discount during the off-season. One year, I was too pregnant to decamp to the country for the holidays. The more babies you have, the faster they deliver, so my doctor wanted me in town in case the little one decided to pull a baby Jesus on us. We cobbled together some decorations from the 99-cent shop (my Christmastime go-to), and put up a tree in the apartment. The questions about how Santa would get in without a chimney went unanswered, Christmas passed, and for months the tree stood in the corner. Many months. We had found some energy and focus back in February to take off the decorations, but now the bare tree stood there, taking up precious urban square footage. I would like to blame the new-baby tumult, but the truth is that getting rid of a tree in New York City is not an easy feat. The Parks Department will pick them up and make them into environmentally friendly post-holiday mulch, but pickup is only on certain days, and I never seem to get the memo.

In the country, we just drag our tree outside and burn it. This sparked an idea. It occurred to me that I had never used a fire extinguisher and that perhaps it would be good to know how one works—you know, in case of an emergency. So, in the ultimate what-were-you-thinking moment, we gathered around the city tree, Peter included (so I can’t be the only adult blamed for this), and someone held a lighter to a dry, crackly branch. It wasn’t me, as I was tasked with actually putting the fire out so I was standing by with the extinguisher locked and loaded. I’m a pretty good shot with a rifle; how hard could this be? The moment the first needle caught fire, the entire six-foot tree exploded into flames. Why this result was so unexpected is a mystery to me even now, but it caused me to scream and at the same time completely forget that I was the one assigned with putting