Santa Claus…
An essay…
Heads up: this post is about my personal experience about believing in Santa Claus and my kids’ declaration of belief. In no way I intend to ruin anyone’s illusions or I am judging what anyone tells their family. Those are very personal decisions and I respect them. I have had close family friends who keep different traditions and we have honored their choices deferring to them if any questions arise from their kids. Silence is often everyone’s best friend. So, please refrain from hostile comments or responses.
This week started with early Xmas presents in my household as we usually do. Not to worry, we do more presents on Xmas eve and Xmas day. When we had children, who are now young adults, we committed ourselves to make their holidays memorable. We however, did not teach them about Santa Claus. I had misgivings about teaching them to believe in something that was not a realistic possibility. I struggled with them realizing later that we had told them a lie. The word lie implies some sinister motivation though. The typical story of Santa might be complex but it is not sinister. It is what we might call a “white lie”.
I grew up with the story of Santa Claus. My Dad wanted us to have that illusion though he preferred Epiphany Day or Three Kings Day also known as Los Tres Reyes Magos o El Dia de Reyes. There are two distinctive memories I have of my Dad at Xmas time where one feeds into the other.
My Dad used to work for the water company in Puerto Rico or the Autoridad de Acueductos de Puerto Rico before he dove full time into being a business owner. Sometimes he would bring me over to spend the day with him. I would spend the time on the secretaries’ desks drawing and playing with their stationery. I remember the cafeteria for some reason too. Siting with him to eat and observing him engage with his coworkers was fascinating. I did not understand it then but he was actually a flirt. Thinking back now I can see it. Funny, what memories one keeps in the mind.
It is customary for coworkers to kind of prank each other during Xmas time by bringing over a parranda in the middle of the night. There was this one night, his coworkers came to our house and woke us up. They sang, they ate, and when it was time to leave, the host of that parranda has to leave with them to the next house. I asked my Mom if I could go with Daddy. I tagged along. I must have been between 6-7 years old. When we arrived to the next house, I went to the front of the house. It was dark and cool. As I looked up to the stars, my little mind thought: “if Santa Claus is traveling around the world, it should be possible to see his sleigh or a part of it at some point in the sky”. So, there I stood waiting. Any small view would have sufficed. I waited. Then, I waited some more. And some more. I saw nothing.
As small as I was and let me tell you, I was not a particularly fast thinker, I could not understand why I would not see anything. My suspicions started to creep in and kept accumulating for several more years. Some Xmas later, on Epiphany day, I blurted out that I knew the truth. We were now living in another house. It was a sunny Xmas morning as many are in Puerto Rico. I simply said to my Dad, “I know the presents come from you”. He was both surprised and amused. We had a talk about how did I come to that conclusion. I told him I had seen him and besides, I did not think the whole thing was realistic. From then on, everything was on the table when it came to Xmas presents.
Fast forward to when I had our kids. Tyson and I opted for taking them Xmas shopping with their two page wish list. These lists started filling up the day after Xmas. Sometimes they were so long that we were impressed at all the things two sheets of paper can hold. We’d go shopping and fill the cart with everything they thought fitted in the cart. One cart for our son and one cart for our daughter. What they did not know was which gifts they would actually get from the carts. That was the surprise. And then on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, they would open their surprises. It was really sweet.
One day during Christmas time after attending their school for about a year or two, they both came home talking about Santa Claus’ visit. We started talking about it and the conversation went something like this:
Kids: how come Santa Claus does not visit our house?
Us: Well, you know we do not hold on that tradition because we have other traditions.
Kids: Yeah, but we want him to visit us.
We: Hmm… but you know we are the ones who buy your presents from the “healthy” lists you both prepare.
Kids: Yeah. But we have decided that we want to believe in Santa and we want him to visit us.
We: So, that is your wish? You want to believe in Santa Claus?
Kids: Yes.
We: Okay. We will not burst your bubble. To be clear, we will still go to the store together and so on?
Kids: Yeah, pretty much.
We: Okay.
From then on and for several years, we started to put out milk and cookies for Santa Claus. Tyson would make sure to eat the cookies, drink the milk, and leave some crumbs for them to see the “evidence”.
To the both of us, it was important to honor our kids’ request about something they clearly knew the truth about. They wanted to suspend belief for a bit of time to engage in an illusion. How could we not honor that sweet request? More importantly to us, they do trust us implicitly. Our best gift to each other has been honesty and transparency. Even when there are hard things to be shared and sometimes it is scary or difficult, we do sit down and hash it out.
This has been a full circle for me. My inquisitive mind craved honesty when I was a child and my kids’ inquisitive mind craved illusion even though they knew the truth. We indulged them because they asked. Presently, we do not need to keep up with the same illusions but we do keep up with very long Xmas lists and surprises.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Love,
Alma
P.S. My in house editors are otherwise occupied today. Please forgive any typos and misspellings.