Tip-toe Through the Santa Mine

I am going to tell you a little bit about our Santa traditions, how they evolved, and why we do or do not do the things we do. I am not telling this story in order to tell somebody else what they ought to do or not do. I am telling this story as ammunition in the annual Santa wars. I'm telling you this story because it's kind of funny- in retrospect, and if there is a moral. well, I will tell you what I think the moral is at the end. I told it last year, and as I said then, this is not a post that ought to make anybody feel guilty. This is not a post to persuade anybody else to do Christmas as we do. It's just a post with a funny story about why The Equuschick is responsible for the fact that we don't do Santa. Just read it and laugh (please laugh). Don't read it and feel guilty. WE don't care if Santa is a fixed presence in your homes in the month of December. We don't believe you are lying to your children or setting them up to disbelieve in God, or otherwise sinning against the child. We know that most kids believe in Santa and then learn better without any 'issues.' We don't have deepseated religious convictions about it (we don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday at all, so it wouldn't bother us that Santa has become a secularized figure), but we're not going to get all het up over it if you do. Your family, your call. This is just a 'what happened to us' post, 'kay?

I was raised in a Christian home, and I believed in Santa, and- for my part, and this is just my opinion and the story isn't over yet, so don't leave if you're anti-Santa- I don't think it harmed me a bit. My parents made it their practice to tell us 'the truth about Santa' when we were around six years old. I don't even remember when and how I learned, but I do remember that when my youngest brother still believed and I was around ten years old, I thought it was very cool to be 'in' with this secret bit of Grown-Up Knowledge.

So we started out to do the same thing with our children. All went well with my first daughter. When she discovered the 'truth' about Santa, she thought it was fun to learn the secret. Didn't harm her a
bit. She also thought it was very, very glamorous and exciting to have this esoteric grown up secret.

By this time, I must tell you, I was very smug about the non-Santa camp. Those who suggested that this was deceiving children and they would wonder if you were telling them the truth about Jesus later, well, I won't tell you what I thought. It wasn't pretty. It was arrogant. Those who said it would crush children to learn the truth, well, obviously they were just silly. Hadn't I learned and been unbowed? And the HG, hadn't she positively reveled in the discovery of this mystery? Clearly, the other case had no merits.

Along came our second daughter, the redoubtable Equuschick. She was indignant. She was very upset to hear that there was no Santa, and she actually refused to believe me. Things did not go well. All my smug assumptions were exploded, one by one, by my small daughter. The people I thought were silly? Oh, I groaned within. They were right. (don't go away yet, more to come). She argued for at least a week, maybe two. It was horribly traumatic.

FOR ME!

The thing is, I *really* liked Christmas and all the trappings. I loved them. I reveled in them, and we romped through every Christmas tradition with great joy and frivolity every single year. I collected Christmas and wrapped it around us like a warm blanket. I had no internal conflict with the Victorian traditions of Christmas (trees, Santa, mistletoe, stockings, holly, ivy, elves, and so called secular carols) and religious issues, because I grew up in a church with a staunch stand in sola-scriptura, truly sola scriptura. So if there was no foundation for a religious practice in the Bible (mostly the NT), we did not have accept that there was biblical authority for that religious practice. Therefore, I had not grown up celebrating Christmas as Jesus' birthday and it was not part of our family traditions- until for a couple of years I added that to all the other Christmas trappings as well in our own tradition encrusted celebrations.

So we were going all out- my husband would sneak outside at night to ring bells, and I would say to the girls, "Hush! Listen? What could that be?" They would be all wide-eyed wonder and gasp, "It's Santa's sleigh bells," and I, carefully not lying, would say, "do you think so?"

I bought Santa his own wrapping paper and hid it carefully away so that all his presents were wrapped in paper the children had not seen, and our presents were wrapped in distinctly different wrappings and bows. We put out cookies and milk, with carrots for the reindeer, naturally. We wrote letters to Santa. We discussed how he could get down chimneys where there were no chimneys. We got the pictures taken in Santa's lap. After the children went to bed we would put out presents from Santa and fill their stockings and I was so excited on Christmas morning that I woke up my children more often than they woke me up (this is still true). We once had a friend come out to the house in his Santa Suit to give them a couple early presents. He was a friend of a friend, so the girls wouldn't recognize him. That was great fun. I don't even remember everything we did.

One thing I did not do was come right out and say that he was real. If asked, I never said yes. I always responded by asking, "well, what do you think?" I never came right and overtly lied about it. I just built up all
these corroborating details by my actions without ever in word saying that Santa Claus was real.

Keep in mind that these are the sorts of things my parents did, too, and yet I wasn't bothered when I learned it was one great big giant pretend, and I never heard that my brothers were, either . Our eldest never was
bothered by it, either.I am stressing that because I need to keep reminding myself that the exact same process happened with four other children I know of and they all were JUST FINE with learning about the make believe part.

But then the Equuschick was six, and it was time to let her in on this delightful, hilarious, very coolly grown up secret- that there was no Santa.

She was not delighted, hilarified, or even mildly amused. She was angry, indignant, and, in fact, she scoffed at such a notion. She refused to believe me.

She thought about it all day every day, and it seems like weeks later she was still coming up to me to argue about it. "But if Santa isn't real, how come his wrapping paper is different from all the other presents, huh? How about that? He IS real, isn't he?" And I would have to hang my head and mutter that, well, daddy and I bought that wrapping paper too, and just hid it in the back of the closet and only used it for Santa's presents. She'd look shocked, and, I thought, dismayed at her parent' perfidy. She'd walk off shaking her head. I have to confess I was secretly pleased with this one, because my husband thought the wrapping paper bit was unnecessary and the girls were too little to notice and not logical enough to draw conclusions. I drew what comfort I could from the fact that the Equuschick was clearly more logical than most small children. Devastatingly so.


Then a day or two later she'd back with, "If Santa isn't real, how come we set out cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer and then they are gone in the morning? That proves it." And I'd have to confess that, well, Daddy and I ate the cookies, the carrots, and drank the milk. Then she'd be shocked. I still shudder over having to admit the truth to her when she demanded indignantly, "You ATE Rudolph's CARROT? YOU?" The best I could say in my defense was, "Well, Daddy helped!"

I felt wretched. And, of course, she never asked her father any of these accusatory questions even though he was just as involved in the conspiracy as I. No, she only grilled and humiliated me. Not even when she said, "But we HEARD Santa! There were footsteps on the roof and bells from the sleigh outside! Of COURSE he's real!" And I would have to sheepishly admit that Daddy sneaked out while they thought he was in the bathroom and did this whole bell ringing gig just to make this great pretend more fun. "YOU KNEW it was daddy all the time?!" Well, yes. And Daddy knew it, too, obviously, so why couldn't she go wound his ego with these questions, child, why? "It was just for fun, " I assured here. Oh, yes. Lots of fun. "Wasn't it lots of fun?" I pleaded.

It is a chilling thing to face the Equuschick's sardonic and accusatory eye, even when she was only six years old (and wearing about size 4T clothes). From an infant nobody has been able to snub with a look better than the Equuschick. I quaked in my shoes. I had nothing to say.

A day or two later she would be back, "But we wrote to him! We told him what we wanted for Christmas and we write init in a letter and mailed it to him. What about that?!" And so it went- she would come up with a new argument, I would explain it and be embarrassed as I stood before my tiny judge who contintued to be shocked at every new evidence of her parent's (not parents', just the one parent, me) treachery.

We never did Santa with the rest of the children. Probably they'd all have the personalities to be able to take it in the humorous and fun spirit which we intended, but we're not interested in taking a chance. I personally don't ever want to repeat the experience of having a child indignantly exclaim "You Ate Rudolph's carrot? How could you?." It was humiliating and made me feel ashamed.

I think it's interesting that she never once questioned the existence of God through all this. She didn't doubt that _He_ was real. She just doubted that her parents were sane and reliable people. No, she doubted that her mother was sane and reliable. I am not sure I have ever managed to regain my status in her eyes.

It's also interesting that she is now 22 and she does not remember any of this. She doesn't remember believing in Santa, she doesn't remember finding out he wasn't real, she doesn't remember spending a week or two holding me over the coals with her constant challenges She thinks it's all very funny now. Me, I'm scarred for life.
So that is why we don't do Santa. Nothing deep, nothing philosophical or theological, just the traumatizing experience of falling in the teeth of the six year old Equuschick's formidable logic skills.

We do tell the youngest lot that there was a man name Saint Nicholas who gave money to poor people, and that this is who Santa is based on. It's touchy, because then we get in situations such as the one where one of my children flatly announced to another child, "Well, Santa was a real man, but he's dead now."

We're really popular at our friends' houses this time of year. A real joy to be around, the Common Room Crowd. Come visit us and let us tear down your children's cherished dreams and pretends. How can you resist an invitation like that?
(I have *told* them and told them not to tell other people that Santa's dead, but it's hard for children to remember these things).

The moral to this story, if moral there is, has little to do with whether we do or do not do Santa, and everything to do with being smug, irritated, judgmental, or dismissive and other people and why they do the things they do. I was wrong- not for doing the whole Santa bit, and not for dropping the whole Santa bit, but for getting het up enough about what other people did that I allowed myself to sit in judgment of them over such a small issue- even if that judgment was primarily in my head. I am not one who is opposed to passing judgment- I think another word for that is discernment, sometimes. But sometimes it's just presumption, and there is enough of that on both sides of the Santa coin.

So we don't do Santa. nevertheless, on Christmas even we will hang our stockings on the cardboard chimney the youngest two children painted, and there will be new presents under the tree on Christmas morning. There will be rustlings and whispers and giggles in the night as we pass each other putting treats in each other's stockings. There will no lack of 'magic,' it will just be a magic of a different kind. And those who do Santa will not be accidental pagans, lying to their children and laying the foundations for a shattered faith.- unless, of course, they have a child like The Equuschick. And if that's the case, they have bigger problems (and more joy) than they can imagine.=)