A few years ago, my son was seriously questioning the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  This reminded me of my own childhood, and the flexibility of the young mind to hold onto these beliefs as long as it could was amazing.  The formulae to dismiss the logical objections to these entities’ existence were as many and varied as the children who used them.  The fact that classmates didn’t believe carried little weight, at least at first.  Many children would believe in Santa and not the Easter Bunny, or vice versa.  And so, islands of faith persisted in a sea of skepticism, for years longer than one would normally predict.

My own “journey of faith” regarding the Holiday Bringers of Things to Children (HBTC) took an unusual turn.  I was seeing a school counselor in early elementary school.  I didn’t know exactly why back then, and, even now, I know only what my parents told me later.  I think they were trying to see why someone who seemed so bright (their assessment, not mine) had so much trouble getting simple assignments done.  This was an era when ADD was called “won’t pay attention”, ADHD was called “won’t behave in class”, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was called “lazy”, and Tourette Syndrome was called “he can’t help it.”

So I’m not sure they knew what to make of me.  I have some ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of this piece.  When I was five years old and in kindergarten, I told the counselor about monsters and giants as if they were real.  The counselor told me that they were make-believe.  There’s no harm there.  I’d probably been told already by both my parents and my teacher that giants and monsters were make-believe.

But the counselor (whose name is withheld for reasons related to my not remembering it) apparently felt a need to ground me in reality.  The next year, when I was six, he told me that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren’t real.  His explanation of how parents create the illusion seemed pretty compelling.  There were, after all, always nagging questions, like how Santa could get all around the world in one night.  I remember thinking, already at that tender age, that The Night Before Christmas, where Santa paused in the house to chuckle and smoke his pipe, could not possibly be accurate.  He’d have to be much faster.

All that speculation instantly became moot.  The nagging questions ceased to nag, and, even before I asked my parents about it, I was pretty sure he was right.  I did ask them, and, after having a short, quiet, and somewhat sad discussion, they came clean.  I was at least a couple of years ahead of most of my classmates in realizing the truth as my counselor presented it.

Now, David never had a counselor tell him anything about Santa or the Easter Bunny.  But, in the last years of his faith in HBTC, he came to me with some pretty compelling evidence against them.  He had more than just classmates who no longer believed.  He had friends whose parents had freely admitted their part in the ruse.  Some had caught their parents in the act of wrapping a present from Santa, or hiding an Easter egg.  But compelling evidence isn’t always conclusive evidence.

Just because someone pretends to be Santa, I reasoned with him, doesn’t mean Santa doesn’t exist.  The old defense about multiple department store Santas being Santa’s helpers worked here, too.  Even someone who doesn’t believe Santa is coming to their house can be Santa’s helper.  Further, Santa may even skip these houses to save time.  After all, Santa’s work is still being done.  Since no one has ever seen Santa, I continued, Santa may not even be a visible person.  He may even work entirely through helpers; but many people have no idea who their “Santa’s helpers” are.

When the presents arrived under the tree, David’s doubts seemed to evaporate.  He referred to Santa as a real person, a real bringer of gifts.  I don’t know how much of that was pretense.  It didn’t really matter.

But, when he found leftover candy and bags in my closet after Easter one year, it was all over. There was no keeping the illusion alive.  Even if I could have removed that straw from the camel’s back, it would still have remained broken.  And so a new era of cooperation began, and he became one of Santa’s helpers, too.

Despite being one of Santa’s helpers, he doesn’t really believe in the mission.  It’s fun for him, and he sometimes gets to eat cookies.  But there’s more to it, and I hope he comes to see it someday.  I didn’t just play a trick.  I didn’t just tell lies.  I made magic happen.  I lit up faces.  Yet that magic didn’t come from me, or I could make it happen all the time.  It came from the story of Santa.

Now, I’m sure the origins of that story are well documented, as much as the known body of historical literature allows — but I don’t think that matters.  If enough people act as if something is real, it becomes real.  If Santa isn’t real, what’s making all those parents wrap all those extra presents?  Why are they adding to their holiday stress to do such a thing?  Are they really doing all that work because they believe Santa doesn’t exist, or are they doing it because they believe Santa’s work must be done, and they’re not sure if Santa will do it himself?  Most of them probably even believe that Santa won’t do it himself.  But, once again, whose work are they doing?

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are part of our culture.  They influence how we act, and they allow children, for one or two days a year, to give free reign to avarice, to bless it and call it their own.  Greed has been, and sometimes still is, an essential survival skill.  It’s a common trait, to varying degrees, in everyone, and it’s not absent in the presence of altruism, any more than fear is absent in the presence of courage.  Santa may be an idea, a spirit of the season, an invention of our culture; but I believe in him anyway.  I believe I’ve been doing his work on some level since I was six years old, and possibly even longer.

After all this, I STILL have no proof that the original Santa doesn’t visit some houses.  I took an Arctic route when flying to China to get my daughter Dani, and I never saw any workshop.  But maybe I missed it by a hundred miles or so.  Actually, I think it’s been established that there’s no workshop at the geographic North Pole, the magnetic North Pole, or anyplace nearby or in between.  Of course, that’s just details.  He could be headquartered anywhere — or, as I’m more likely to believe, everywhere.

I don’t need to invoke fairies, like the famous Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus editorial reply did in the 1800s.  I don’t need any supernatural part of the invisible world.  All I need are thoughts, feelings, and stories, both shared and private — memes that motivate.  It takes a powerful concept to motivate people who say they don’t even believe in it.  What could be more real than that?

So, to any children who came across this little posting and actually read all the way through it, I say this: Santa is real.  You can believe it now, and  you can keep believing it as long as you want to.  If I don’t believe in the same Santa you do, that’s fine.  I don’t think any two people believe in the same Santa.  All the details are just guesses.  Have a very Merry Christmas!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 3:02 PM and is filed under Steve Thinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.