Epiphany - Extending Christmas

Epiphany - Extending Christmas

You know how some families really get into the Christmas spirit and then there's that let down when it's over and you have to throw away your tree because it's a fire hazard? There's a way to solve that. It's not very American but then what is? My son Joachim once came back from school at told me that the Puritans outlawed Christmas. They didn't like celebrations and thought it was a pagan holiday. Of course, they're right but who cares? When I was a kid, the spirit of the season was Korn, which is a kind of alcohol, not the band. There was also the time when my parents were making a Feuerzangenbowle, which is a kind of Glühwein for pyromaniacs. They poured too much rum on the sugar or the rum was too strong or something anyway, the flames caught the ceiling fan blades on fire. They put the fire out so the house didn't burn down.

So, back to my epiphany. A number of years ago, I told my kids, Joachim, Charles and Renate, that they still had to be good after Christmas, because if they weren't they weren't going to get anything for Epiphany. They had no idea what I was talking about. Actually, I didn't either at that point because it was something that had just popped into my head to get them to stop beating on each other, as kids do sometimes. At least I remembered that Epiphany was the 6 January. I don't know if your kids are like my kids, but I suspect they are. My kids will do practically anything for a present. Honestly, threats and bribery are some of the most effective parenting tools. Adding Epiphany to our scheduled gained me 12 more days to keep them in line. Another benefit was that I could hold back on some of their Christmas presents and buy them afterwards when everything is on year-end sale. It's worked every year, except for the year the things they most wanted were sold out. When that happened, I just brought up some bad thing they'd done and told them they hadn't been good enough.