Happy Christmas Month!

To celebrate, here's a link to my new favourite Christmas song. Like many things, it only gets better with age. Be sure to listen to the very end!

Click here to listen.

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

In the poem In Flanders Fields, we are given the charge to hold high the torch, lest those who gave their lives have died for naught. This year I watched the Remembrance Ceremonies in Ottawa on TV. They began a new tradition - the passing of torch of Remembrance. It began with 108 year old John Babcock, the last remaining Canadian veteran of World War I passing a torch to first a World War II veteran, to a Korean War vet, to a peacekeeper, and finally to a modern day veteran from Afghanistan.

Something about that really struck me. Mr Babcock. He is the last. remaining. veteran. of World War I. After he's gone, after the World War II vets are gone, then what? The importance of remembrance struck me today. Very soon e will not have those faces at our cenotaphs. Those wrinkled faces, once strong, still brave men and women who put our country, our freedom, our way of life above their fear, above their own lives. How often to I forget to be thankful for the place I live, the freedom I have. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't been to a Remembrance ceremony for a number of years. I do remember - assemblies, and I usually watch a ceremony on TV, but what? I can't be bothered to get in my car and go stand for an hour in honour of these?

And so I watched the torch of remembrance being passed. A small symbol, yes, but significant. May that torch never extinguish.

Happy Canada Day, eh?

Here be a little overview of Canadian History for y'all to celebrate this great nation's 141st birthday. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride!



(Oh watch it... it's FUNNY! It's more like "history." Heh.)

Aaaand, cause a few of you have mentioned it to me already today, here be my Canada Day YouTube debut from last year. Sans sound. Avec mucho ridiculousness. Because my camera has no sound (dumb dumb dumb!), I had written a message and the words to Oh Canada on all those pages, but it was too sunny and it all got washed out. Yes. I'm a nerd. And apparently I have no shame...

Happy Earth Day!

Do something kind to the Earth today... and then keep doing it!

Worth watching

Be sure to have a kleenex handy.

I ain't Irish, but you can kiss me anyway!

Taken last year in Chicago. And nope, this picture isn't fixed!

Make of it what you will

Happy Valentine's Day!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

How I celebrated

Buah ha haaaa! OK, not really. Melissa made this picture for me (by yoinking a pic from my Flickr and applying her mad skillz to it!) and it totally cracks me up! As if the original picture wasn't crazy enough!

I can't tell you just yet how I celebrated - it involves another blog post I don't have time to write right now. But here's a hint: that series is called Rebirth for a reason!

The shaft

As in, I totally got it! :P

"All three of my babies were born on special days," my mom likes to say. My brother was born on Thanksgiving. My sister was born on Epiphany. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? But me? I got GROUNDHOG DAY.

The Day of the Rodent.

Oh well, me and Punxatawney Phil will really be livin' it up today! Woohoo! *giggle!*

(click for full size)

Through a child's eyes

When the kids walked in the door Monday morning, the first thing they saw were four great big brown hoof prints on the floor. "Look!" I told them. "Santa came! And Rudolph, too!"

The buzz began immediately.

Santa! Santa came!
Hey, he left a note!
Rudolph put our paper chains on the ceiling!
And our letters are gone!
Santa took them!

The kids could hardly get their coats off quick enough to rush over the the chart board and read what Santa had to say. They looked around at the candy canes hanging, the paper chains a waaaay high up, and the big red fuzzy at Santa left for me to borrow (Miss Hillary, you're SOOO lucky! "Why's that?" Cause you get to borrow Santa's hat AND you get to see him again before Christmas to return it!!!). Some looked around in wonder, some were nearly shaking with excitement. And of course there were a few who punctured the glee with doubt.

It's not real!
The hoof prints are just paint.
Miss Hillary put those chains up.

"Nooo!" I told them. Eighteen excited kids all talking at once and asking questions was boggling my mind, but I just carried on, weaving a tale of Santa's visit and answering their questions as I went. "When I left on Friday, none of this was here! There is a little ladder in the school, but it's not nearly high enough to reach the ceiling! Those chains are WAY too high for me to have put them up. And I would get in trouble if I painted the floor! That wasn't me, either. Rudolph must have had very muddy hooves..." Then why didn't Santa leave footprints, too? [smart little kiddies!] "Well must have been riding his sleigh, so his feet didn't get muddy." It's just paint. Miss Hillary, you painted those. "Nooo! It's dried mud. They weren't there on Friday. Mr. G [an ESL teacher who had come in to drop something off], did you paint those hoof prints?" He didn't either, which was nearly enough to convince them. Miss Hillary, are you sure you're not lying? "I'm positive! I would neeever lie to you! Besides, what could have happened to our letters? And how else could those chains have gotten way up there? Anyway, didn't you say on Friday that you wished Santa would visit our classroom?

Yeah, but why does Santa always come when we can't see him? Why doesn't he ever come for us to see? Then we can KNOW that he's real!

"Ah, but it's not about seeing him. It's about believing. If you ever saw Santa, there would be no more magic."

By the end of our excited discussion on the carpet that morning, the biggest doubter was the biggest believer and every single child was convinced without a doubt that the big man in red had come to visit.

They happily told everyone they saw, too. Friends, teachers, passing parents. Two even ran to the office at recess to tell the office staff.

The day proceeded in sugary goodness as we made and decorated our gingerbread houses. I have never seen so much candy in one place in my life! They loved it, and were definitely in the Christmas spirit, humming Christmas songs and chattering about Santa as they worked.

After school I found a large envelope in my box: our letters to Santa had been read and replied to! I wrote on the outside in big swirly red writing "To Division 21, Love Santa,"dumped a whole bunch of silver glitter inside the envelope, and shook it all around. Up to the staffroom I went, where I dripped some water on the outside of the envelope and stuck it in the freezer to chill overnight.

Tuesday after recess was the big event - our letters from Santa had arrived! I waited an extra minute or two in the staffroom to make sure all the kids were lined up outside our door. As I approached, I whispered excitedly to them. "Boys and girls, look! Santa answered our letters! And it must be fresh from the North Pole! See? There's even ice on the envelope!!!" Gravity and the freezer had worked more magic than I could have hoped, as all the water had run down to the edge of the envelope and had made about a dozen little frozen droplets hanging off the side. Our envelope had icicles!!

Look! It's cold!
And frozen!
It came right from the North Pole!
How did Santa answer them so fast?
He's a fast guy!
Oooh! It's dripping!
Wow! I never got a letter from Santa before!

We all rushed to the carpet where I speedily handed out the letters. I pulled each one out with a flourish, sending silver glitter fluttering to the ground over the students' heads. Miss Hillary, what is that?

With a big grin and a twinkle in my eye, I answered them. "It's MAGIC!"

As the kids got their frozen letters, they all buddied up to read, passing them around and comparing them.

Santa is really busy making toys, so he got his elves to write to us!
Hey look! My elf's twin brother wrote to my friend!
These MUST be real because he answered all my questions!
Oooooh! The raindeers fly using magic flying powder!
Phew! Santa says I'm on the nice list!
Hahaha! My elf's name is "Stinky!"
Here, look at mine! Can I read yours?
[while clutching her letter to her heart:] I LOVE SANTA!!!

The kids spent about ten minutes passing their letters around and reading. (And you have to understand that for my class, to have them that engaged for that long is a nothing short of a miracle!)

I couldn't let the magic end there, though. I know that some of these kids don't really do anything for Christmas, and a few won't have many gifts this year because their families just don't have the money. Santa had to make one last visit...

When the children arrived on Friday, there was a new set of snowy footprints all throughout the classroom - from the door, over to the chart stand, over to the Christmas tree, and back out again. There was a new note, the tree was covered in snow, and there were nineteen gifts wrapped up and laying underneath the tree.

This time there were no doubters.

Santa came AGAIN!!!
And he left us presents!
What IS this stuff?
It's snow!
But it's not melting!
Miss Hillary, those are YOUR footprints!
Put your foot in them, let me see!
... Oh! They're bigger than your feet!
Miss E [my special ed worker], try your foot.
It's not hers, either! That proves it MUST be Santa!
This is the very first present Santa ever gave me!
Oh, this is the best day of my LIFE!

After reading the note and handing out the gifts, the kids tore into them to find the biggest candy canes they had ever seen. These must have come from the candy cane forest at the North Pole! I didn't need to do anything to create the magic this time - they did it on their own. Stories and theories swirled about how Santa could have gotten into our classroom without a chimney (maybe he came through the walls, maybe the janitor let him in, maybe he came through the mouse hole [er, the mouse hole?!?! It's now been filled.]). They talked about how fast Santa's sleigh must be and about how cold the North Pole is. And I sat back and watched, loving every minute.

It's been a while since I've been able to see Christmas in that magical child-like way. It has significance every year for me because of that very first gift that was given long long ago, of course. But there's another aspect of Christmas that I have not seen for a while, and that's the magic, the innocence, the wonder of it all. Impossibility made possible. Childlike faith in someone that can't be seen.

Or then again, maybe it's really been there all along. Maybe that's what Christmas is all about, even for us adults. Childlike faith in a gift too good good to be true, and yet! There He lies wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. God become man to dwell, to die, to deliver. Impossibility made possible. What a gift we've been given.

As a very wise elf said in her letter to one of my students, "Whoever believes in Christmas will always have magic."

How right she is!

I just might be getting a little carried away...

We wrote letters to Santa today at school. No asking for toys allowed - they were to ask questions and tell Santa about themselves. In Canada, if you write to Santa and send it to the post office, you get a letter back, so the kids are all excited to get a letter from the big man in red himself. (I mean, come on, the North Pole is in Canada! It only takes one stamp to get there!)

We've also been making paper chains all week... when they kid's work was finished, they could go to the art centre and keep working on their chains. One kid's chain is nearly 10 metres long!!! I promised them that I would put them up to decorate the classroom after school.

Little do they know that Santa will be paying our classroom a visit this weekend! Instead of the regular morning message from me, there will be a note - written entirely in red sparkly glitter glue - from Santa:

HO HO HO! Santa here! I came to visit your class on Saturday but there was nobody here! I left some treats for you, and my hat for Miss Hillary to borrow. She has to promise to give it back before Christmas, though! I'll need it! Miss Hillary put up your paper chains, but not very high. I got Rudolph to help me put them higher. I'll answer your letters as soon as I can! ~ Love Santa.

I've spent the last two hours with Christmas tunes blaring, teetering on top of the highest ladder in the school attaching paper chains to the just-over-three-meter- high ceiling. I have also painted four reindeer hoofprints on the floor right by the main classroom door (only four, though, cause Rudolph flew around the room most of the time!) and have dabbled them with a wet paper towel so you can't see the paintbrush strokes. There will be candy canes for each kid hanging from the art hangers that are draped over the rows of lights. The only major setback to my preparatory festivities this afternoon was stepping backwards onto the not-quite dry glitter glue message when I was trying to move the ladder. D'oh! I had to take a plastic spoon and scrap off a few words and start again. There are now red glittery footprints all over my carpet and the bottoms of my shoes sparkle! As long as I don't wear the same shoes on Monday, I'll be able to tell them that Santa left footprints, too!

I've got a grade six class (full of my students from last year!) lined up to write a personalized letter from Santa back to each student. I'll put the replies in the freezer for a while, scrape off some frost, and deliver them to the kids on Tuesday or Wednesday - direct from the North Pole!
That, and we're making gingerbread houses on Monday! It's going to be quite the day!!!

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.