What does Santa Claus say?

When my daughter was 18 months old, experiencing her first 'real'  Xmas, she was talking and even in full sentences but brief sentences. I would encourage her, or at least I imagined I was encouraging her to talk, by asking questions repetitively that she knew the answer to. AT age 18 months at Xmas, I kept asking "Santa Claus says 'ho ho ho', honey." then a long pause and then I'd ask "What does Santa Claus say?" And every time, and I think I asked a few hundred times, she would say "Ho ho". Then I would say, "Santa Claus says 'ho ho ho', ho ho ho, honey, not ho ho, but ho ho ho."  I would have sworn she was being funny, playing a trick on me. She was always very smart. She knew the difference, I was sure, between ho ho and ho ho ho but she never once said the word three times. And believe me, I tried and tried.

So ho ho HO, Merry Christmas.'

The year before, at age six months, she mostly slept through Xmas although the Christmas tree lights seemed to please her. She was oblivious to Santa Claus but aware that some fuss was in the air at six months.

At eighteen months, she knew who Santa Claus was and, I am positive, she knew he said "Ho, ho, HO!". To tell the truth, I loved it that she would not say that third 'ho', loved her stubbornness.

Now her stubbornness is not quite so charming.

But ho ho ho, anyway. Merry Christmas.

She could sing most of the words to Jingle Bells. I just didn't believe she did not get the distinction between 'ho ho' and 'ho ho ho' but gol-dang, she never once said 'ho ho ho'. And she laughed a lot after she said 'ho ho'. 

I would give anything to hear her say 'ho ho' in the soft, whispery tones of my long ago baby.

Ho ho.