A
note for any young eyes that come across this blog:
The
following is about my personal experience with the Spirit of Christmas. You should not let it affect your
experience. If you believe in the magic
of this Season (and you should, I do!), perhaps you ought to go to another
page. This is boring, adult nostalgia
about the holidays and you deserve to being reading more exciting material. If you do decide to read further, please keep
in mind that I am a grownup and don’t really know anything about anything.
A
couple of friends of mine recently posted on Facebook about their sons learning
the “truth” about Santa Claus’ existence and the difficulties surrounding that
particular loss of innocence. The sons
were 14 years old. I started to respond
and it became utterly necessary to write about it at further length.
I am
not sure that any child believed in Santa Claus quite as much as I did as a
child. I thought about Christmas darn
near the entire year with the kind of fervor that nowadays is relegated to nuts
and people with OCD. I was the kid who
insisted upon a real tree and insisted that we keep it up well into January
and, to this day, there is a song that I wrote to Santa that sits in my box of
ornaments.
I wrote
that song during Spring Break when I was seven.
I never
questioned that we made Christmas cookies in my mother’s favorite flavors or
that the notes thanking me for leaving a snack for the reindeer were written in
that same loopy handwriting that wished me a “great day” in my school lunch
box.
I never
questioned until I was about ten and a woman at church asked my mom about where
she had gotten the leather bomber jacket I was wearing. Mom had forgotten that the jacket was from
Santa and told her that it was from Hamricks.
It was
at this point that my literal belief in Father Christmas began to adjust. I never had a “Eureka!” moment, as it were. It just, sort of, morphed into realization,
but I didn’t ask my mom about it at this time.
You see, somewhere during this mess of innocence lost, my parents began
the process of getting a divorce. I didn’t
think my mom needed any more big changes, so I kept the secret a few more
years. In the spirit of full disclosure,
I also was afraid that letting Mom know might cause a decrease in overall gift
profits for the final quarter.
When I
finally asked her at about age 14, it was fairly anticlimactic. We discussed at length the Spirit of
Christmas and whether I still wanted her to put gifts out from Santa (I did and
she still does, by the way). It was, for
the most part, not that big of a deal. I
told her that I had known for awhile and she said that she had guessed it. She asked me why I had chosen that moment to
tell her and I couldn’t really put it into words.
I think
I can now.
I came
to understand that my mom gave of herself without considering the reward of
being recognized. Santa always left the
favorites of all my gifts. My mom
sacrificed the best to the spirit of the holiday. I came to understand that the real magic of
Santa Claus was not in the man himself, but in a parent staying up late to
build a toy with too many pieces and not enough instructions so they can wake
up early and see wonder in their child’s eyes.
I came to understand that it was more important to my mom to hear me
tell the story of how Santa left sooty footprints on the rug than it was to
keep a clean rug.
Now,
before the cynics out there begin to holler about how creating the mythos
behind Santa is just us lying to our children, I want to tell you something:
Children
are naturally apt to believe in magic and monsters and spirits and fairy dust. They will believe in the monster in the
closet regardless of your insistence. Why
not let them have something good on their side?
Realizing
that Santa and my mom were the same person never felt like a betrayal. It was a coming of age for me. We were allowed to share in that moment when
I started to think like an adult. We
celebrated it and mourned it in our own ways and I wouldn’t give it up for a
million dollars.
To my
friends whose sons now know the “truth” about Santa, here’s what I know. In 2012, a time when cynicism is prized and
information is accessible everywhere, your sons believed in Santa Claus for 14
years because your love made it plausible to believe in magic. No parent could ask better for their child. Merry, merry Christmas.
