So this weekend we celebrated our son’s “second” Christmas, but since, if memory serves, he spent his actual first Christmas crying and pooping and sleeping with nary any clue of what all the fuss was about, this was more like his real actual first Christmas. And being that he’s only 15 months old, we weren’t even sure this one would count.

But we were wrong.

The kid took to Christmas like Tim Tebow takes to scruff, or Tim Tebow takes to evangelism, or Tim Tebow takes to not being able to play quarterback. (See Part 2 here.)

We plopped the baby down next to the tree, surrounded by the bounty of brightly wrapped packages my family had gotten for him, and we began the process of indoctrinating our son into consumerism. He didn’t get it immediately, but once he realized the boxes had toys in them, and that those boxes belonged to him, it wasn’t long before he was ooh-ing every time one opened, but only for a moment, because he realized that all his ooh-ing was slowing down the progression to the next box that was full of something else he wanted even tho he had no idea what it was or what to do with it even after it was opened. He just knew it was his and he wanted it and he wanted the next thing that was his give it to me give it to me give it to me WAHHHH!

I was happy to get my kid a bunch of toys. It made Christmas a hell of a lot more fun than normal because, let’s face it, there’s only so much fun a 35-year-old can get out of sitting around the living room with the same people he’s been sitting around the living room with for 35 years. But now, thanks to the miracle of childbirth, we all get to experience the holiday anew, through a fresh set of eyes. We get to watch my son slowly progress from ignorance to awareness to expectation to entitlement to inevitable disappointment and ultimate disillusionment.

Next year this kid is going to be mad with anticipation, and it won’t be long before he’s tweeting about his horrible parents who didn’t get him the toy he really wanted. But we’re ready for it.

Because though we may not be a religious family, we’re certainly a proudly American one, and judging by the eagerness with which this our barely year-old son wanted to get to the next present in his pile, he just might end up being president.

(See Part 2 here.)