Two schoolchildren, two different schools, two Christmas programs.

(Not that I, twenty years into this, sit through the whole thing. Forgive me. I figure out when mine is on, witness the event, and move on. As I said…twenty years.)

Tonight: Joseph’s school, which has up to this point impressed me, in its old-style building, with its rather old-style basic religious sensibilites, at least in PreK, and what I can discern from, I don’t know, the art in the hall leading to his classroom, which is about as far as I get into the building.

Ah, but our dreams are made to be shattered, when the program begins, yes, with the news that this is a birthday present for Jesus, but then the first big number is the middle-school chorus singing a medley from The Polar Express, concluding with an mush of the book’s (and I guess the film’s) last lines of the important thing is to "believe…believe what’s in your heart…just believe."

Believe this.

Side rant on Polar Express. I am not  Van Allsburg fan – he seems to self-important and solemn – I prefer children’s books with squiggly, quirky art and rhyming text (more interesting to read aloud)  and actually just read the book for the first time last week, when Joseph checked it out of the library. You know, I really despise that general "holiday" message of "just believe"…believe in the magic of the season, that the bell is ringing, or whatever.  It’s so mindless and in the end, lays the groundwork, not for belief, but for disbelief.