Yang and I are in a mall in the Zhongguancun (中关村) neighborhood of Beijing. It's where Yang grew up back when it was considered the boonies. Aidan calls and wants to make sure Santa knows what toy he wants. We get home after some less than successful shopping --- my basic approach is to reject everything until i am so tired of shopping that i make the worst possible choice -- and Aidan asks about his toy. Diligent, that one. Yang tells him she told Santa and Santa knows exactly what he wants. Then Aidan makes a connection better not made. He asks Yang if she knows the English name of the toy. No. Then how could Santa know since Santa only speaks English. Yang tells me at which point I tell Aidan that of course Santa speaks Chinese.

Two lies individually are not good, together they can be fatal.

We had planned on having my Dad call Aidan and Lydia with his Santa voice. Aidan now expects Santa to speak Chinese. This could be a problem.

We go about the call anyway and the one nice thing about kids is they are incredibly gullible little tykes. Smart yes. Wise or suspicious not quite yet. Here are a couple of photos I snapped when Santa was talking. Just so genuinely damn happy.

Later that night we track Santa's sled on the internet (http://www.noradsanta.org/) and I tell them a story of Santa visiting me as a kid. Eyes wide the whole time. I don't mention that Norad is a military defense organization founded during the Cold War and if they did see Santa on a sled flying over North America they would shoot it down faster than you could say...

Merry Christmas!