December 20, 2007
Thursday

In yesterday’s piece I wrote about Lynn’s first three visits to Santa Claus, the second of which resulted in a picture of a screaming fifteen-month-old clutching a candy cane while trying to flee the embrace of a bearded stranger. Of that incident I wrote this:

What was I thinking? What was so important about this picture with a mythical figure we never even pretended we wanted her to believe in that I would make my beautiful little girl endure what was obviously a frightening ordeal?

I have been greatly surprised, and saddened, today to find myself the target of ridicule and condemnation from a number of people because I did not present to my daughter as a fact the existence of a man called Santa Claus in a red suit who lives at the North Pole with elves who make toys all the livelong day and who then on Christmas Eve travels around the world in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and delivers those toys to all the boys and girls in the world (except the naughty ones) by sliding down their chimneys, even at houses that don’t have any chimneys, or whose chimneys are vents for pits of burning coal or oil or propane.

“I can’t get past the part where you didn’t encourage belief in Santa!” wrote one reader.

I tried to explain. We presented Santa Claus to Lynn the same way we did Big Bird or Cookie Monster or Mickey Mouse or even the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. They all are fantasy figures who make us feel good and be happy while we are engaging with them in the context of their stories, but they are not real. (And oh for heaven’s sake I didn’t use lit crit diction like that, I used age-appropriate diction. And I didn’t explain it so clearly. I just never pretended that Santa Claus was anything other than a fantasy figure.) Santa Claus in particular represents many warm and fuzzy things about the Christmas season. So she believed in Santa Claus the way she believed in Big Bird or Cookie Monster.

“Why would you deprive her of such a wonderful experience?” said another. “That is just cruel!”

Why would I present Santa Claus as a pleasant fantasy and not as a reality? I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t have anything to do with my being a woman of faith, but everything to do with the fact (yes, fact) that (oh geez, I hope I am not presenting life-changing information for anyone here) Santa Claus is not real. He is a myth.

Evidently no harm has been done. Lynn is twenty-two, finishing an undergraduate degree in biology, sensible, sensitive, level-headed, cheerful, courteous, and thrifty, brave, and clean as well.

But what do I know? Maybe she’ll be in a therapist’s office in years to come ascribing all her problems to the fact that her cruel mother did not lie to her about Santa Claus. 

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