On Santa, and Why We Believe.

I just finished watching a (G-rated) Christmas movie about a family that has fallen on tough economic times. In it, the stressed out mother yells at her children and is sarcastic with them. Then a man robs a bank, shoots and kills the father of the family, and takes off in the car with the children in it--because they had been left alone while the father ran into the bank. He proceeds to accidentally drive the car off a bridge with the children in it, plunging into an icy river of death. This movie, One Magic Christmas, was released in 1985 and was a childhood favorite of mine. It was one I would watch over and over every year. (You can watch it instantly on Netflix, like I just did.)

Everything turns out perfectly happily in the end—with the help of Santa, a cowboy angel named Gideon, and the family’s brave youngest child, time is conveniently twisted and turned, among other miracles. But the bulk of the movie is damn sad, and scary to boot. (The thing with the Christmas lights on the street shutting off to the soundtrack of ominous sounding synthesizer chords is the stuff of horror movies more often than family Christmas fare.)

One Magic Christmas: Abby confers with Santa.

All of which is to say; God I love this movie. I loved it then and I love it now. It is MAGICAL. The name doesn’t lie. It defies logic and likelihood in favor of hope of redemption, the possibility of magic, and affirming the shades of gray that keep any of us from truly being a “good” or “bad” guy in any story.

Magic doesn’t require perfect answers. However, in modern parenting we often require perfect answers, despite our “nobody is a perfect parent” lip service. Which may explain why most of us in the gentle or attachment parenting crowds “don’t do” Santa. We’re not trying to be Natalie Wood’s grumpy and cynical mother, but what on earth are we supposed to tell our children about Santa and very poor children? Or why Santa doesn’t come to our Jewish and Muslim friends’ houses? And we don’t bribe our children for being “good,” so where does Santa fit in our parenting relationships? It’s all so terribly uncomfortable, and it’s a LIE, and the Santa Lie is a ticking time bomb of emotional pain and disillusionment. What good parent would ever tell it?!

Like many discussions in which being seen by others as a (ideally, The) Perfect Parent is paramount, I intuitively bristle at this anti-Santa stance. I dig in my heels. I refuse to just nod and cheer and get swept away in the intoxicating wave of perfect answer progressive political correctness.

(And good God, One Magic Christmas?! Forget the incredible G rating, this movie would simply NEVER be made in 2015. Which I find awfully sad. What a bunch of cottonheaded ninnymuggins we all are.)

Why are we so afraid? Why are we so terrified of not having a perfect answer to a hard question? Why are we so scared to let our kids know or believe anything that will ultimately become confusing or painful or both? At what age are kids magically “ready” to deal with hard stuff? What are we willing to sacrifice so that our children can have the perfect childhoods we didn’t have—and come on, do you really think that’s possible?

I wonder how my friends would answer those questions. Please, feel free to share. I really want to know how others think about this. My answer, for myself (because I’m afraid, too), is that even in the very infancy of my own parenthood, if I know anything it is that I am terrified of facing all the ways in which being a parent highlights my own weakness, my frailty, my imperfections, the things I never learned to deal with in an emotionally healthy way, the things that set me off and make me lose the control I’ve spent so many years cultivating, the dominance of my most base lizard brain. It’s humiliating and it’s degrading. It makes me hate myself sometimes, to be honest. I hate the mistakes I’ve made and I’m bracing for the even worse ones that await me ahead.

So I’m sharing my process as I have thought through the three most common protests to encouraging a belief in Santa. I respect whatever anyone else decides is best in their family, but this is where mine stands for anyone curious enough to be reading this right now.

What makes a lie a lie, anyway?

1. What about the inevitable grief and pain?

I grew up believing in Santa. My belief in Santa is one of the most joyful, thrilling things I remember about being a child. I practically trembled with excitement when I woke up on Christmas morning to find the gifts painstakingly wrapped in paper I knew my parents didn’t have.  The sheer delight of the magic consumed me. I would hardly sleep. I had a glitter-coated plastic garland of candy and gingerbread I hung by my bed, that always made me think of the “children all snug in their beds, while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads,” and feel I was one of them.

I was also fascinated by death and separation, allowed to cry about these things when the emotions associated with them overwhelmed me. Allowed to fixate when I needed to and ignore and deny when I needed to. I wasn’t sheltered from movies, stories or experiences that might upset me, and these topics were certainly never referred to as “triggers”. When I was ten and I finally admitted to myself that it was not very likely that Santa was a living person any longer and that he probably didn’t actually come to my house, it was hard. It was sad. It was like a death.

I had a few hard Christmases in between childhood and young adulthood. I had to come to terms with what magic meant to ME, what I believed in and did not believe in without somebody else telling me. I wasn’t ever ready to let go of Santa, truth be told. I’m still not. In fact, I’ve come to a place where I absolutely believe in Santa and his presence in my house every Christmas Eve night. (Explaining that fully would take several more pages.) But it’s my belief; I fashioned it, I feel good about it, it’s my own personal truth that I was thankfully afforded the opportunity to make for myself in my own time, growing pains and all. To me, Santa is not a lie at all. But he can be presented as such. (See #3)

A friend recently posted this blog about NOT doing Santa, and the author insists that her pain over the Santa “lie” when her brother spilled the beans cancelled out all her joy. But as gentle parents isn’t it one of our primary goals to teach our children emotional health, to navigate the muddy waters of their difficult emotions without them feeling that they ultimately overshadow or cancel out the good stuff? Would we choose to not get our child a pet because the pet will inevitably die and cause pain? Not to mention encourage loving, attached relationships with older people. I would be deeply sad if my adult child claimed that he wished he never knew his grandparents because all of the good memories were tainted by the sadness of their deaths. How is allowing a young child to believe in magic in the way most intuitively WANT to any different? Growing up is hard. Loss is hard. I want to be here to support my kids when they go through the hard stuff, but I have no interest in preventing it.

2. The hard and/or impossible to answer questions. 

First of all--very young children usually don't ask them. They are too (developmentally appropriately) self-centered. It never occurred to me as a preschooler to think about the following things. It was all about the magic. I have a memory burned in my brain of my stepson at age 4 telling one of his many rambling tales and pausing at one point, as though seeming to realize his narrative wasn't very logical. He then shrugged and said, "It's just magic." That is the world in which the very young live. Magic and reality, fiction and non-fiction, are one and the same and it's a beautiful thing. Magic is the answer to any flaw in logic. They will arrive at more rational understanding soon enough without our help. (Of course, children in loving families WILL create their own Christmas magic no matter what we tell them or don't tell them. But I think there is a lot of value in sharing communal, historical magical traditions like Santa.)

I do dread the day my son asks me if Santa will bring him something we can’t afford, or worse, why Santa doesn’t bring lots of food and money to people who need it. I don’t have perfect answers. But—like all of the other things above I fear, I have a gut feeling that being a parent is about facing these things and being uncomfortable with them. Maybe by sitting with them awhile we will be allowing the hard questions to enlighten us a little more sometimes. Or at least remind us that we are so, so far from perfect, no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try. That sometimes “I don’t know” is a great answer to give your kids.

After all, forget Santa—what will I tell my son when he wants to know why an animal was hit by a car? What will I tell him when he wants to understand why so many thousands of people die every year of hunger, when there is more than enough food on the planet to feed all of us? What will I tell him when he wants to know why armies full of decent, brave, kind individuals with families get together with massive weapons and the goal of killing as many strangers as possible?

I will tell him I don’t know. Because ultimately, personal and religious philosophies aside, that’s the truth.

3. Isn’t Santa a terrible role model for faith?

My husband brought this one up and it’s an excellent point. I certainly don’t want my kids growing up and transitioning their belief in Santa into a belief in the Standard American God; another white guy with a white beard who lives in a magical place and grants wishes if we are good enough and ask often enough. But that’s why one’s approach to Santa matters so much. I plan on raising my kids in the Unitarian/United Church of Christ faith traditions, traditions that encourage questions and don’t require simple answers. So what I won’t do is create an elaborate set of answers about what Santa does and does not do. I will not expound on how he brings gifts, make up convoluted answers for how he will get into our house, or threaten my children by saying if they are not “good” he will not come. Of course he’ll come. (I need Santa the most when I’ve been the most Grinchy, personally.) I’ll let them assemble their own stories. I’ll simply say Santa is real and he is coming to our house on Christmas Eve, because that’s what I believe. And when they ask me about presents or chimneys or reindeer, I’ll ask them what they think. And when they answer me I’ll say “That could be right!” And maybe each year their questions and answers will be a bit different. That’s how I want my kids to learn how to have faith.

"It's just magic."

One Magic Christmas may be a cheesy Christmas movie and the story a standard seasonal trope, but I still think it boldly and whimsically and frighteningly, yet ultimately quite gently, brings us the message of real magic. And the real magic is that we’re all here, we’re all still trying to love each other and understand each other, to build families and communities despite the terrifying risks and randomness that can decimate them at any moment. We refuse to let fear end us, let the bad keep us from wildly seeking the good. To me, that’s what Santa symbolizes and why I have to believe in him. He makes more sense and is more true at the core of the concept of his existence than many human constructs that most people believe in, like Presidencies and Monarchies. Just when we think we can’t believe anymore, Santa will show up in our home someday, in some way, and show us that we can actually believe even more.

So I’ll tell my son there’s a Santa, and he comes to our house on Christmas, despite what other people may tell him. I’ll let him figure out his own truth as he grows, and someday I’ll even let him read this. But I won’t let his innocent purity, his intuitive knowledge that magic is real, be destroyed by fear and logic, reasonableness and political correctness, as well-meaning as it may all be. I choose a more bewildering way, for better or for worse.

At least now, sweet boy who is now sleeping at age one but will be pondering these words at the brink of adulthood before I know it, I hope you understand why. I hope you won’t question my integrity, but will instead share it. I love everything about you, particularly your innate connection to the magical divine that I can no longer completely share in. I won’t deny you your place there, for as long as it lasts.