Here Comes Santa Claus

Social Circle, Georgia. I don't remember how my parents did it but for the past few years my ex and I would scrupulously use a different wrapping paper for the few gifts coming from the North Pole instead of from Walmart. Then, after the kids went to bed, I would eat most but not all of the milk and cookies they laid out and move the fireplace screen askew.

Ava stopped believing last year when she was nine. Her mother, my ex, was wrapping our then six-year-old son Chet's presents with her when Ava added a note for him saying, "Be nicer to your big sister, Santa." I was horrified, sure he'd smell a rat. I mean he's growing up in New York City, he's supposed to have some street smarts already. Instead he excitedly waved around his personal note from St. Nick himself.

This year Ava told him flat out that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. I held my breath but he just told her that she was wrong; that he'd seen a red light out his window last Christmas Eve that could only have been Rudolph's nose.

He then turned to me.

"Daddy, do you believe in Santa Claus?"

There was a very nice article by Nathalie Angier in the New York Times the other day on higher primates and how we lie. It also reported that we humans are no better at spotting a lie than flipping a coin to decide. So I could have lied to my son and made him believe it for now, but I have my eye on the long term. I'd rather hurt his feelings about Santa Claus but tell him the truth now because I want him to trust me later and tell me when the other kids in school are trying to ply him with crystal meth.

Then I looked into his big brown eyes and took the daddy way out.

I lied a little.

"I'm not sure. Some people say they've seen him. I never have."

Ava huffed angrily and rolled her eyes at me.

She's one to talk. She still believes in the tooth fairy. Or at least she doens't return the dollar that I leave under her pillow.

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