In the past few weeks, both of our kids have had major crises of faith
regarding Santa. The first was Gavin’s
when, reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, he discovered that Santa smokes
a pipe. Having been thoroughly
indoctrinated in the evils of tobacco both at church and at school, the poor
kid was horrified. “But I thought Santa
was a Mormon!” he cried. (Cue long
discussion about how people who smoke can still be good people, and not all
good people are Mormons.)
The second crisis was Lucy’s. After
a couple of years of dancing around the subject, she finally came up and asked
me directly whether Santa was real.
This is a very, very difficult question for me to answer.Long ago, before we had kids, I found myself swayed by the argument that if I tell my children to believe in Santa and tell them to believe in God, then say “just kidding” about Santa, they will never have faith in God. Like many philosophical notions, this one crumbled in the face of parental realities. Trying to explain to a wide-eyed, two-year-old Lucy that Santa is a metaphor simply didn’t work. Toddlers don’t get the concept of metaphor – and anyway, the explanation wasn’t completely satisfying to me.
My mother absolutely, positively believes in Santa. I have never heard her concede that Santa
isn’t the one who fills the stockings and brings the “big” present on
Christmas. Mom doesn’t believe in all
magical holiday creatures: one of my favorite memories is of the year she
declared herself “too tired” to be the Easter Bunny, and sent my brother Dave
and I out to get basket filler for all our younger siblings. Mom has spent many a Christmas afternoon fast
asleep, but has never been “too tired” on Christmas Eve. Even in the face of my dad’s perennial
grouchy Grinchiness, Christmas morning has always been magical at my house.
I guess I have to admit it. I
believe in Santa too.
Is there a fat guy in a red suit hanging out with reindeer and elves at
the North Pole, squeezing down chimneys and smoking his pipe in people’s living
rooms? I’ll grant you, probably
not. But I firmly believe in all the
wonder and magic and charity that Santa embodies. There is something special about
Christmastime that is hard to put into words.
It has to do with divine love and the incarnation of God into the form
of a tiny Jewish baby, but all of that is mysterious and theologically
complex. I’m not sure I can entirely
grasp it, much less explain it to a kid.
The image of a jolly, omniscient, loving but sternly judgmental Santa Claus
fulfills my need to personify (my postmodernist friends would say “reify”) the
meaning of the baby in the manger.
I admit that every Christmas morning, a small part of me wonders if
there will be a surprise by the tree that wasn’t there when I went to bed the
night before. Some token left by a guy in
a sleigh. Every year I wake up to
squeals of joy from my children and come downstairs and find that everything is
as I left it the night before. But
somehow I find that I’m not disappointed by this. I may have bought the gifts and stuffed the
stockings myself, but all of these things become transformed in the night. By the time the kids wake up, the magic has
happened. Santa has come.
Yes, Lucy, there is a Santa Claus.
