Santa, Baby!

This is a particularly busy time of  year for The Big Guy in Red.

I'm not sure what it is about my  own circumstances this year that have me pondering him so deeply...

Perhaps it's that I picked up a babysitting gig for the season because money has gotten excruciatingly tight. Spending so much time with doe-eyed babes (okay, so they're pre-teens. But they're children, still, and they have that child-like wonder that I cherish...) is bound to make a childless phenomenon such as myself think twice about the glowing eyes of tiny tots playing beneath a tree. It's hard not to think about Santa when you're with little ones at Christmastime.

Perhaps it's the money situation. Knowing that Christmas will be frugal and filled with more cheer than with actual presents for my family has me thinking about a festive benefactor slipping down the chimney and making magic for the people I love.

Perhaps it was the radio ad I heard not too long ago, all throughout which the company eluded to Santa but didn't mention him by name, likely to avoid angering parents of tentative young folk who might hear the ad and ask questions about why Santa needs to use UPS.

Whatever the reason (my heart or my shoes)... I've got Santa on my mind lately.

As a child, I don't remember believing firmly in Santa Claus. I remember leaving him whatever we had available - not usually cookies, but often rum balls or fruitcake and one of my father's favorite beers. I remember leaving carrots out for the raindeer one year. I remember writing him a note, and an unfamiliar hand writing back a response.**1

But what I don't remember is the crushing heartbreak of realization that Santa Claus was a childhood falsehood. I never faced that realization that would thrust me into inconsolable tears, and make me question everything I had previously known, up to and including God and the love of my family. I've witnessed it in other children, but never faced it myself.

This Christmas, the song on my brain-radio is "I Believe in Santa Claus" from the animated Christmas special The Year Without A Santa Claus. In case you haven't heard it, check it out:



And I believe it's my current state of mind about Santa. The big fat man with the long white beard may be a personification... but I believe that there is a tiny piece of Christmas that lives inside each Christmas-Celebrating-Individual**2 waiting to be nurtured or extinguished. Either a child will face that heartbreak and accept that Santa Claus was a childhood dream, or they'll quietly observe and create their own understanding that includes the whisper of hope I still carry myself. Perhaps, in time, that hope will fade and the commercial cynicism will set in. But it is my fondest wish that I can retain just a morsel of my own childlike wonder to brighten my holidays with hope.

Best wishes for the happiest holidays to you, my ReaderFriends. I do hope that they're everything you're wanting and more.

**1 A response that I desperately wish I had kept, by the way, as an echo of a happy childhood Christmas...

**2 I hesitate to say "Everyone" because I wouldn't want my Jewish or Hindu or Pagan or Whatever friends to have to make space for Santa Claus when he isn't part of their tradition.