The boys and I watched White Christmas one evening during the week leading up to Christmas. I don’t know if you remember White Christmas or not, but the opening scene ends with bombs dropping out of the sky.

Nothing graphic or horrible happens, but the boys were petrified. They didn’t know what was going on. I said that the explosions were bombs – and then had to explain what bombs were.

Whoops.

Moving forward to the morning of Christmas Eve, I discovered C playing on the floor by the kitchen table. He had taken all the manger scene figures and arranged them around a train that was knocked over. While I watched, he lifted up a block, stood as tall as he could, and dropped it near the train. “Boom! Crash! Boom!”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Bombs! They’re bombs, daddy!”

“Oh.” I went back to making breakfast, and then realized what was happening. “Hey, wait a minute! Don’t bomb baby Jesus. We’ve got to keep him safe.”

He looked down at the figures, considering, and then shook his head. ”But they’re bombs!” He dropped another block. “Boom!”

I moved in for the rescue. “Okay, let’s just move baby Jesus up to the table to keep him out of the way.” I picked the little plastic figure up and placed it on the table.

He looked at me for a second and then reached up and pushed it so it fell off the table, bounced once on the chair, and landed next to the toppled train. “Oh no!” He shouted. “A bomb hit up there! He fell all the way down! Oh no!”

“Okay,” I said, rescuing the little plastic infant a second time. “New rule: No bombing baby Jesus.”

I guess this goes well with last year’s rule.