I can’t remember the exact moment that I became a sceptic to the Santa story but I do know one of the glorious side effects of having older siblings entails suffering and being manipulated by many befuddling jibe on the subject. When old enough to join the joke I did secretly enjoy the expression of sheer horror on my little sister’s face when my brother taunted “I’ll call Santa right now and tell him not to bring you any presents”. This little fib worked just as well with pretending to call the police and have her put her in jail, classic.
Psychologists say that most children figure out the game by about 7 or 8 on their own without a fuss but though the memory is hazy, I can still vividly remember my distress. From the initial doubts, wherever they originated, the idea was struck and it grew inside of me like a Christmas snowball picking up speed. My friends and I used to speculate in the playground, some of us more concerned than others. Rebecca was convinced that she’d heard Rudolph in her garden whilst Amy swore she’d seen her mother stuffing her stocking. Santa was apparently in too much of a hurry last year, hmm, I suppose that’s acceptable, after all this man does have an awful lot of houses to get to.
Although that was precisely something I couldn’t wrap my inquisitive, little brain around…how could one man travel the globe in one night in a sleigh flown by reindeers? I was fed a few excuses but none of them seemed to stick; he could stop time, he could move at the speed of light, the reindeers were a special levitating breed unique to Lapland. It was all magical, all conceivable but nothing entirely believable. Wasn’t it a little coincidental that Father Christmas had writing just like my mummy and didn’t she have the same wrapping paper that he wrapped up our goodies in sitting in the cupboard? I mean I know this guy is fat but who can really eat that many mince pies?
The older I got the more I agonized over this mystical merry man, I just couldn’t stand the thought of being kept in the dark to some well-known truth. So taking matters into my own hands I ransacked the house, only to pull back a closet door revealing the Harry Potter board game I’d scribbled on the top of my list that year. In that split second my whole world shattered. Though desperate for the words that could revoke my suspicion and resurrect my belief, my parents, tired of my Sherlock Holmes routine, confessed to everything.
With distaste for the Christmas charade, my mother recently expressed that her, amongst many other mums, didn’t feel comfortable lying to their children for whom they are supposed to be a beacon of trust. She proposed the weirdness of a concept that encouraged children to believe in a man who would bring presents for simply doing nothing. I can’t recall ever being offered an explanation as to why I was showered in gifts for a seemingly trivial day, but then again what six year old is going to question that?
Perhaps the one that found a teddy when their best friend found a bike waiting under the Christmas tree, sorry honey but St. Nicholas has favourites and you’re just not one of them. Yes it’s all very well saying that the elves can’t make a puppy in their workshop, until that one kid gets a pony that is.
It’s not uncommon for a child to be scared of Santa either, several parents have shared their sleepless nights stories and to be honest I’d find the thought of a strange old man creeping about my house in the dead of the night, whilst I lay there sleeping, pretty traumatizing too.
Although it may be healthy to exercise some imagination that’s arguably not what’s happening here. The scale of the deception is so astronomical that it’s not so much little white lies but rather Great White Shark ones. We aren’t even asking children to pretend or even merely believe, we are telling them its fact and then we are telling them their facts are false. This realization that such blind faith was misplaced spells problems for any religious folk too. Children may find it difficult to believe in the existence of certain things when other things they believed in transpired as façades.
The trouble though, is that the lie is almost obligatory. Youngsters can’t exactly be trusted with the seasonal secret which means you have no choice but to indulge in it lest you face the wrath of the angry parent. I’ve heard of people getting quite the earful because their child was the one running into school boasting about how the fat red man ain’t real.
However, research shows that parents actually get more upset about the shattered illusion than the children themselves. This is because children are no strangers to a fairytale or two, they are brought up being told a variety of stories and it’s up to them to figure out what is real and what is make believe. Though I may have avoided CBBC for awhile I soon realised that contrary to my Granddad’s sound advice, the television wouldn’t actually turn my eyes into squares.
Yet all the awe and wonder of Christmas is not just real for the children that believe in it but it’s there too for the adults that get to be around it. With imagination usually so limited there’s something so captivating about dipping back into the Santa saga. So when your child loses that blissful ignorance, you lose the enchanting experience, again. No wonder parents take it so personally.
Every culture has its own array of myths and legends which seem to do little harm to the individuals that engage in them and more often than not even promote ideal behaviour. More than that, it’s just nice. Nice for everyone to come together to participate in ancient tradition and it’s our festive fantasy that makes Christmas the phenomenon it is today. I do think the reasons behind Santa may have grown slightly arbitrary and the fabrication itself may have got a tad out of hand but at the heart of it all is only good intentions. So perhaps if we could thread a more coherent story then this is a tinsel tale that can keep on tumbling. Sweet little lie or big porkie pie, I for one am going to keep fuelling this Christmas one.
Image Sources:
1) http://www.cafetriokc.com/wp2/wp-content/uploads/triosanta-shh1.jpg
Eleanor Gomes