A Very Happy New Year

Wish you all a Very Happy New Year, wherever you are on the face of Earth.

Free Christmas Gifts from Disqus

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Blogger Sync

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Better Spam Reporting

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Improved Reaction Reporting

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Auto-Close Comments

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Updated : In Reply To

Some reply thread can become very long and to reference a comment you need to click the "in reply to name" link. This would take you back up to the original comment. Now instead of loosing your place on the page, a pop-up window will show the previous comment.

And yes, a Happy Birthday to The Chronicles of R. She celebrated her second birthday yesterday, that's 25th December, 2009. And a Merry Christmas to all my Readers!

7 Simple Techniques for Keeping Your Child Believing in Santa Claus

Many parents love to see the joy and excitement Santa Claus can bring to their child. For many people, their childhood memories of Santa Claus are the best Christmas memories they have. Keeping your child believing in Santa, however, can be a daunting task. Children are smart these days, and some of the old Santa tricks just don’t get by them anymore. Many children are perpetually plagued with the question, "Is there a Santa Claus?"

Every family may have slightly different Christmas traditions with regards to Santa Claus, but there are some very easy things any person can do to keep the belief in Santa at an all time high. The following 7 techniques will keep your child believing in the magic and wonderment of Santa Claus and you don’t have to be familiar with the history of Santa Claus to apply them.

1) Have your child write a Santa Letter. This can be a simple letter that your child can write to Santa Claus. Children absolutely love to write a letter to Santa, but they occasionally need a little parental guidance to pull it off.

Help your child include a special list of gifts they desire for Christmas into the Santa letter. Many children enjoy getting more creative by drawing or cutting out pictures that represent the gifts they want.

Once the child’s Santa letter is finished, simply mail it to the North Pole. Mail it to the following Santa Claus address: Santa Claus, 1 Candy Cane Lane, North Pole 00001. Don’t bother using a return address, you wouldn’t want it to return as ‘undeliverable’ for any reason.

2) Write a Letter from Santa and have your child receive it in the mail. Create a personalized letter from Santa by directly mentioning your child’s name and certain information about your child in the text. This will make for a much more believable Santa letter. Be sure to make these letters from Santa different for each child in the same household. The child will have no doubt that Santa Claus is coming to town after they receive their personalized letter from Santa!

"I can honestly state as a parent that the personalized letter from Santa has single handedly restored my son’s belief! The look of shock and amazement on his face when he got an ‘authentic letter from Santa’ quickly abolished any doubt he previously had about Santa Claus."

Print the Santa letter on authentic looking letterhead, as this will help to reinforce the believability. Many different styles of paper can be found at your local office supply store.

You can add to the fun by getting your letter from Santa postmarked at the North Pole. Simply send your Santa letter inside another sealed, stamped envelope to: North Pole Christmas Cancellation, Postmaster, 5400 Mail Trail, Fairbanks, AK 99709-9999. (It needs to arrive by December 15th)

Many parents add a certificate for being on Santa’s "Nice List" along with the Santa Letter for added effect. Another great item to add with the Santa letter is a Santa Claus coloring sheet. Combining the personalized Santa letter, the nice certificate, and the Santa Claus coloring sheet is a sure fire method for keeping your child believing.

3) Have your child leave milk and cookies out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. This is simple enough to do with your child. It lets your child know YOU still believe, too. Make it a bonding experience for you and your child by baking the cookies together on Christmas Eve. Don’t underestimate how powerful this can be for creating joyful memories of Santa Claus, for both you and your child. Did you know that Santa’s favorite cookie recipe is Chocolate Chip?

Put the fresh cookies on a plate next to a glass of cold milk. You can even put a short letter to Santa Claus next to the cookies and milk. These tasty treats will give Santa the energy he needs to continue traveling to the millions of other households awaiting his arrival.

Don’t forget to leave some crumbs on the table Christmas morning. Your child will feel honored that Santa Claus ate the whole plate of cookies and drank all of the milk before rushing on his way.

4) On Christmas Eve, have your child sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn. Santa Claus gets milk and cookies on Christmas Eve, but what about Rudolph and the rest of the joyful gang? What do they eat? Well, reindeer food, of course!

You can make a batch of environmentally friendly reindeer food with common grocery items such as oats or granola. (Do not use potentially hazardous items, such as glitter in your reindeer food. Although this may make the reindeer food appear to be magical in some way, it can be extremely dangerous if ingested by small children, should they decide to ‘sample’ the reindeer food. It can also be potentially hazardous to the small animals outside such as rabbits, dogs, or cats that may eat the food.)

Once you have the reindeer food mixed up, walk outside with your child on Christmas Eve night and explain the importance of making sure Santa’s sleigh team stays fed. Sprinkle a small amount onto your yard near bushes or trees.

This healthy reindeer snack will give Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer the nourishment they need to continue flying Santa’s heavy sleigh into the night. Your child will be proud for helping Santa Claus on his journey, and is sure to raise the belief in Rudolph and the other reindeer as well.

5) Leave Santa Claus tracks in your house on Christmas Eve. Being sure to not stain your carpet, leave some dirty boot prints by the fireplace (or doorway). Be sure to draw attention to the Santa Claus footprints on Christmas morning. To a child, this is solid evidence that Santa had been to their house.

6) A month or so after Christmas, send your child a postcard from Santa Claus on vacation. This not only keeps your child believing, but reminds your child that Santa is in their hearts all year long. It also answers the common question posed by children after Christmas, "Where is Santa Claus now?"

Be sure to make the postcard from somewhere very warm and sunny. After all, Santa does need a break from all that North Pole snow.

7) Mail your child a birthday greeting from Santa Claus. This technique works in tandem with the personalized Santa Letter you mailed your child previously. Mailing your child a simple birthday card from Santa is an excellent way to keep your child’s belief high throughout the year. Your child will think, "Wow! Santa actually knows my birthday!" The shock on your child’s face will be priceless.

Parents that have extremely intelligent kids or kids that are getting slightly older will genuinely need to utilize all 7 techniques mentioned above to keep their child believing in Santa Claus.

These techniques will assure your child is one of the millions of children that write Santa Letters each and every holiday season. one of the millions of children that believe wholeheartedly in Santa Claus.

Paa - Not Worth The Hype

Paa, one of the most hyped movie of the year. But honestly, it didn’t quite live upto its expectations. I found a lot missing in the movie, rather everything was missing in the movie, except for Amitabh Bachchan.

Paa is about a love-child Auro who is suffering from a very rare genetic disease which causes in an accelerated ageing. So even though Auro is only 12 years old, his body is that of a man of 80 with all it’s geriatric complications.

The first thing that came in my mind while watching the movie was that they could have done away without Amitabh's makeup. It actually came in the way of displaying Amitabh’s facial expressions, and thus he ended up looking dumb in certain scenes. Next comes screenplay, lot of things were not portrayed properly in the movie. For example, where was the pain of Bidya Balan after she was asked to abort her child by Abhishek Bachchan! She just sobbed once in front of her Mum and that’s it, that was it?! Where was the pain depicted by her when she learned of the disease her child was suffering from? Where was the pain of a single mother?

Moreover, after seeing the entire movie I didn’t realize much about suffering of Auro because of his disease. Okay, I understand that he fainted a couple of times and had to be hospitalized, but is that it! I have seen children suffering from heart blockages more than that. Did he never felt heartbroken that he could not participate in the merriments of the rest of his schoolmates?

The chemistry between Abhishek and Bidya Balan didn’t work out at all. I felt Bidya Balan was pretty stiff as if she was facing the camera for the first time! It simply makes me wonder why did Amitabh praised her so much before the release of Paa.

Paresh Rawal as Abhishek’s on-screen father was a waste. I felt he was put there as a comic relief when his character could have been more powerful. Iliyaraja as the music director was a massive failure, his songs were simply average and the movie would have been way better without them.

I think R. Balki was confused, he was confused about what he wanted to do with the movie. He was confused whether he wanted to make a Amitabh Bachchan starrer, a commercial movie or a succesful flick. Although the movie was not entirely an waste of your money, yet I would suggest you to go for it only if you don't have another option.