Visiting Santa

As everyone involved with this whole Holidailies thing knows, coming up with something interesting to write about everyday for a month is a challenge. I checked in at the Holidailies site for their daily prompt. Today it was your memories of visiting Santa or taking your kids to see Santa. As I'm sitting here I'm drawing a complete blank about ever taking my kids to visit Santa. I'm sure I must have done it. After all I'm a bit of a Christmas freak. Surely a visit to Santa would be on the agenda during the holiday season. We must have pictures somewhere, but for the life of me I have no memory of it. No waiting in line, no screaming kids. Nothing. Maybe our babysitters took them? I'll wait until tomorrow and I'm sure Daughter#1 will fill in the blanks. As for my own memories, all I remember was I was scared to death of the old guy. The times we went to visit, I was usually with my siblings and my Uncle, Mother and Grandmother. We would go to the Bambergers department Store in Newark. I loved visiting that store and seeing how it was decorated. The lights, the music, all the garland and bows. The bigger than life candy canes. It was like a kid's fairy tale land come to life. I didn't mind watching other kids visit Santa, but man, I didn't want to be up there. Usually my poor Uncle got stuck with the job of taking me up there along with my sister and brother for the obligatory picture. Poor guy. Usually the picture showed one or all three of us crying. Fun times. Once we got past five or so, I think we gave up the whole visiting Santa thing. Too much stress. I still get a kick out of checking out Santa when I go to one of the local malls. After all he's the symbol of all that is good with the world. Merry Christmas.