"Christmas, my child, is love in action," (Dale Evans Rogers).
"Mom, is Santa real?"
The question is hurled through the air from the backseat of my minivan as we bounce along the winding country road that leads us home. It's come from Haley, my youngest, who, at 10, sits on the precipice of belief.
I am not ready to have this conversation, though I'm not surprised it's come up now. Discussions of this magnitude frequently begin in the car, shouted over the top of Taylor Swift while I'm negotiating traffic, trying to make it to cheer practice on time.
"Mom? Why are Mormons against gay people getting married?"
"Mom? Are you a Christian?"
"Mom? What does it mean, 'I've got passion in my pants and I ain't afraid to show it?'"
We spend a lot of time in transit. It makes sense life lessons are dispensed here.
"Some of my friends are saying it's just your parents who put the presents under the tree," Haley yells, competing with Bruno Mars.
I turn down the volume and glance in my rearview mirror. So, I sigh. This is happening. Right here. Right now.
"Hmm, they are, huh?" I stall, trying to buy time. "What do you think?"
A few years back, Haley noticed that not all Santas are created equal.
It wasn't the Halloween-grade red suits, or even the slip-on shoe covers in lieu of black leather boots. No, it was the beard that gave them away. The perfectly groomed white hair (more like fur) with an opening cut for the mouth, attached around the ears with elastic signaled fake Santa. Luckily, she accepted the explanation that the big guy needs helpers around the world, and while they are not the real, true Santa Claus, they are bona fide representatives, sanctioned by the Master Elf himself.
While playing the competitive sport of Santa sightings with her younger cousins (so many Santas, so little time), she bragged, "I've seen the real Santa," as in, 'you only think you have'.
"At Bass Pro," she clarified. "In Columbia."
Wide-eyed, her spellbound audience gasped, "But how do you know it's him?"
"Well," her eyes darted up to the left, conjuring an image of Old St. Nick. "He's pretty old, kinda fat and his beard is dusty and old-ish. He's the real one."
But this year we're skating on thin ice. In fifth grade, her analytical ability and attention to detail are developing at an alarming pace. Nothing gets past her. She's getting curious. And suspicious.
"I think that if there is really no Santa Claus, and if parents buy the presents and put them under the tree themselves, that would mean that you and Dad are doing it too. And all of these years you're doing it, then you are LYING to the kids!" She finished in a rush with an in-your-face challenge: "Would you LIE to me, Mom!?"
Oy, this one. She's curious, suspicious, and savvy. Brutal in her honesty, the question she poses is nearly impossible to answer. Her older sister, Sydney, still believes, though at 14 she's surrounded by peers who've long since traded the childish story for a nobody-believes-that-anymore attitude: cue eye roll. But because Sydney has Down syndrome, her development is slower, and, like many of her milestones, she gets there only when her little sister does.
Maybe it's her role as baby of the family, but Haley is in no hurry to grow up. She refused to potty-train until she was three, hung on to her pacifier until four, hauled her high chair out of the trash at seven and to this day lapses into baby talk. However, as anxious as I am for her to grow up, I'm dragging my heels on this childhood rite of passage.
Christmas seen through a child's eyes becomes new again.
Reality can wait. Her innocence is adorable; enchanting even. The year she was in second grade she hung a tiny stocking next to her full-sized one with a note that read: "Merry Christmas, Santa Claus! I love you! This is mine too (with an arrow pointing to the miniature sock). Haley Kent! Shign if yove been here (sic)!" At the bottom she penciled boxes for checking: 'Been here' and 'not been here.'
Wanting to hold on to the magic stems from my own childhood and my father's firsthand account of seeing Santa. Enrapt, my brother and sister and I would beg to hear the tale again and again. As he tells it, in the wee hours of Christmas morning, when everyone else was asleep, he awoke to sleigh bells. And like in the poem, he sprang from his bed, flew to the window and looked up just in time to spy Santa's sleigh flying away. The fantastical vision of my dad as a freckle-faced farm kid, leaning out an attic window into the cold night air, gazing into a starry sky to glimpse such an extraordinary thing made me shiver with delight, and more than a little envy.
He solidified our belief in the story by staging a Christmas morning I'll never forget. Rushing into the living room before dawn, we stopped in our tracks, mouths agape. There on the carpet was proof Kris Kringle had been there. Large boots tracked soot out of the fireplace and directly to each present laid out on display, including a Crissy doll for me, with long red hair that pulled from the top of her head. Just what I'd asked for.
In the Kent family, Papa Noel makes an appearance at our extended family Christmases. Announced by approaching jingle bells, he enters through the front door with a "Ho, ho, ho, Merrrrrry Christmas!" and a bag of presents on his back. From the moment he arrives, the children are spellbound with fascination.
The year she was 5, he made a substantial impression on Haley. Spending time with each child, he welcomed them one by one onto his lap, even the teenagers. Shy, she hung back, but in a big booming voice he said, "Haley! Come sit," and patted his thigh with a white-gloved hand.
"Ho, ho, ho. Have you been a good girl this year?"
Ducking her head she answered, yes, she'd been good. She hugged his furry neck and thanked him politely. Present in hand, she hopped down and hurried to her daddy, whispering ecstatically, "He remembered my name!"
It never gets old. The excitement never wears thin. Not even for the grown-ups. And the kids never find it significant that PaPa is nowhere to be found during these visits.
My husband, too, loves to see his daughters enthralled with the wonder of the season and is not above artful manipulation. "Girls! Come see this!" he called urgently one Christmas morning. In footie pajamas they padded quickly across the floor to peer through the cold glass of the patio door. As their warm breath fogged the window, they glimpsed, lying under a dusting of snow, a mound of reindeer droppings. A telltale sign that Santa had indeed been there.
Is Santa real? my children want to know. Though Father Christmas is a mythical character, the story originates from real historical events, embellished over time to illuminate the hopes and dreams of generations and ignite the imagination of children of all ages. As the inevitable approaches, my hope is my girls won't outgrow their belief in the mystical, but will recognize that it pulses in everything around them. If they look, they will find it; in their parents, in their grandparents, in those they know and love, and even half a world away in those they don't know. Most of all, I hope they find it within themselves.
I want them to understand that though the giving and getting of presents is a beautiful ritual, the observance is not about the gifts themselves. Focusing on the spoils of a Christmas morning piled high with crumpled wrapping paper threatens disillusionment far more than questioning Santa's existence.
Growing up means discovering the spirit of Santa. And it's not in the goods.
When I was in second grade, I woke up on Christmas Eve and tiptoed down the hall. Peeking stealthily around the corner I saw, not Santa, but my parents, sitting on the couch together. It was dark. The twinkling lights of the tree cast a soft glow. Music played on the stereo turntable, the crackle of the needle on vinyl adding richness to the vocals of The Ray Conniff Singers:
'And when you're giving your presents don't forget as you give them away, that the real meaning of Christmas is the giving of love every day.'
Unseen, I watched them, mesmerized. Once noticed, instead of shooing me back to bed, they made room and drew me in to curl up between them. Mom on one side, Dad on the other. I sank down into the cushions, enveloped. Their love, a powerfully sentient and sustaining presence, embodied Christmas; Santa was never more real to me. Three years later they divorced and holidays were spent going back and forth, but the warmth of that night lights my memory still. After 45 years, the thought awakens the child who lives in me and fills my heart with hope.
Whether it's Santa Claus and his sleigh in a whirlwind night of jet-setting global magic, or the miraculous birth of a single baby long ago, under a star leading wise men and shepherds alike to the babe, or both, the meaning of the season lies in connection.
Quite simply, it's about the exchange of love, and the phenomenon of belonging to each other.
Secretly praying she'll hold on a little longer, I say to my daughter, "Haley Bug, I guess you'll have to decide for yourself."
She takes a deep breath and sighs it out. "Weeeeelllllllll ..... my friends say, 'You don't still believe in Santa, do you?' and I just go with the flow and say no so they won't make fun of me, even though I really do believe."
Saddened that she needs to protect herself from peer pressure, I'm nonetheless pleased that her child-like outlook prevails. At least for one more year.
"But, I have a plan," she says conspiratorially, grin spreading, eyes twinkling. "This year?" She raises her eyebrows. "When we go to Bass Pro? I'm going to whisper in Santa's ear, 'Are you the real Santa?'"
I can see the wheels spinning in her busy little head. She wants to believe.
"What do you think he'll say, Mom?"
I smile, "I don't know, sweetie. Maybe he'll say, 'Do you think I'm the real Santa?'"
"Well, I think he is."
I love this kid's chutzpah.
"Besides," she adds, "Last year you and Daddy were ex-hausted. There's no way you could do all that in one night."