Christmas Mea Culpa

Every year we choose a theme for our holiday decorations and as you can see this year was red and white. The real theme however turned out to be Thomas the tank engine. Despite our best efforts to keep corporatized characters at bay, we succumbed to a few carefully vetted examples. So far we have exposed Finn to Thomas the tank engine, Yo Gabba Gabba and Elmo. Here is where I begin my justification process. . .

Thomas the tank engine seems to teach solid values while maintaining a sense of fun and innocence, and more importantly it contains no toy commercials. Plus, as a dad, I have this genetically built in desire to share trains and manly stuff with finn. Next up is Yo Gabba Gabba a crazy new show created by a couple o' L.A. type dads and features a who's who of retro and hip artists and musicians. The music is solid (most of the time) and we dig the fact that the show is so weird that if freaks out a lot of normal parents. Last and least we have Elmo (hangs head in shame), to be fair, Elmo is part of Sesame Street which carries a lot of weight since both C and I grew up with Jim Hensons crazy creations. Unfortunately, Elmo has become a huge mass media icon to every numbskull parent out there and that really doesn't appeal to us. I know we may be fooling ourselves but we sort of have this self image as trend setters or at the very least 'indie' parents. Unfortunately for us, the moment Finn caught a glance of that happy, bright red face and heard that high pitched voice he was sucked in as were we, by proxy.

So, yes it was a very Thomas the tank engine holiday and Finn had a blast playing with his new trains. We'll keep fighting the good fight, trying to minimize his exposure or interest in mass media crap. I think we are realizing that you have to pick your battles with this stuff. We get a kick out of him enjoying the trains and knowing all their names so we can deal with it. After all he hasn't said "McDonalds" or "Mickey Mouse" yet and I guess that counts for something.