The Key to Christmas: Colorblind Kids

This evening we make the mistake of keeping the children out past their bedtimes. Driving home -- they in back, screaming at the tops of their lungs; we in front, losing our minds -- Tabitha shrewdly mentions Santa Claus. It will be the first Christmas every member of our family understands English, and so it is also the first Christmas that Santa can be used to bribe and to blackmail.

"Santa's watching to see if you're being good," Tabitha says. "Do you think you are being good?" Instantly, the threat quiets 5-year-old Tallulah -- who longs for an American Girl doll. But Dixie, age 2, continues to holler.

Alas, she is vulnerable. A month ago, introduced to the idea of Santa Claus, Dixie said she wanted a red bike. She has since written Santa an illustrated letter, sat on three different Santas' laps and lobbied us to speak to Santa on her behalf -- all in an attempt to secure the red bike. The red bike now lays stashed in the basement so she is certain to get it, no matter how she behaves. But she doesn't know that.

"Dixie," says Tabitha, firmly but evenly. "What does Dixie want Santa to bring her for Christmas?"

An admirably surgical strike, I think.

"A pink bike!" Dixie shouts.

"No," says Tabitha, cheerily. "Dixie wants a red bike!"

"No red bike!" she hollers, struggling to liberate herself from her car seat straps. "Pink Bike! Piiiinnnnk Biiiiiiiiiike!"

Around our house the newspapers tend to pile up, unread for days on end, and then they are devoured all at once in great yellowing heaps. There's real efficiency in ignoring the news until it is old. Ignore it for long enough and you see that very little of it actually matters. An 8-day-old newspaper can be guiltlessly chucked into the recycling bin in a fraction of the time it takes to digest a brand new one. But this morning, flipping through about two weeks' worth of the New York Times, I stumble upon a story that is so good that I regret I didn't know about it earlier: Abraham Lincoln was gay. Or rather, a soon-to-be-published book, "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," will lay out the evidence for Lincoln's homosexuality: He supposedly shared another man's bed for seven years, he wrote vaguely lurid prose to male friends, he supposedly lusted after a member of his White House security detail (in retrospect perhaps not a good idea).