A Note on Christmas.

I tolerate Christmas. It means nothing to me spiritually, I don’t take part in all the commercial nonsense, and the magic died when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, so toleration is about the best I can manage.

I remember the time when the Santa Claus myth went down the pan. I was eight or nine at the time. I was a member of the church choir, and the previous Christmas Eve we’d visited a local hospital to tour the wards singing carols. When I got home I was surprised to see the corner of a small pile of Christmas presents sitting under a table in the hall. An attempt had obviously been made to hide them under some fabric, but not entirely successfully. I wondered how they’d managed to get there, since Santa hadn’t visited yet. I felt a sense of foreboding, a suspicion that I might be told something unpalatable if I made enquiries. So I didn’t. Instead I convinced myself that they were just a few extras in addition to what the great man would be bringing later. And then I let the matter drop.

The following summer, one of the older boys in the street told me that Santa Claus didn’t exist. My first instinct was to refuse to believe him, but then the incident of the presents under the table joined forces with this new intelligence and, by the following Christmas, Santa Claus had gone forever. So had the magic of Christmas.

My daughter refused to have anything to do with the myth when her kids came along. That was partly because she insisted on telling her children the truth about everything right from their earliest age, and partly because she saw how the image of Santa Claus was used by the commercial world as a major marketing tool. She also knew, from personal experience, how much that practice causes suffering to poorer families at this time of year.

I fully understand her view and respect it. Nevertheless, I do admit to having mixed feelings. The best aspect of Christmas for me as a child was the visit of Santa. It wasn’t just the materialistic expectation of receiving gifts, but the magic of having some mysterious and benevolent being enter the house unseen at dead of night and leave something good behind. It came at a price, though. It left me feeling thoroughly dejected from Christmas night onwards because I knew that my tiny ration of magic was over for another year. I wanted magic to be the norm and the mundane to be the exception. Even as a child I found mundane reality generally tedious.

So what’s the answer to this one? Should we tell our children the truth in all things from the outset, or should we inject a bit of false magic into their lives by maintaining the lie of Santa Claus? I haven’t decided on that one yet.