I Believe in Santa Clause

I don't remember when I knew that Mom and Dad were behind the gifts that read from Santa under the tree on Christmas morning. I was younger than I would have liked to be I'm sure. I do remember my brother finding out. He was a year younger than me and was probably in the double digits when we shattered his world with the news. He broke down in tears at the thought of being lied to and the probably the prospect that there wouldn't be any more gifts now that he knew it was all a hoax.

I didn't think much about it as I got older. There were no more true surprises. You gave a list of the things you wanted and they were under the tree with the obligatory box of socks and if you were the brunt of the family joke that year the box of underwear. I still liked Christmas and all the things that went with it; the tree, the decorating and the music. Who doesn't love Elvis pouring out Blue Christmas? But I really didn't get it until I had kids of my own and was faced with being or not being Santa.

Being Santa. Sounds like a good premise for a movie, oh wait there are about a thousand of them out there that address this topic. They address the white hair, and the red suit, and moving to The North Pole, and how the sleigh and reindeer work, and always some dilemma with getting everything done in one night. That's all well and good but that's not what it's all about. The trouble with being Santa is that you have to believe in something. You have to believe in something bigger than yourself, bigger than gifts, bigger than the birth or a savior, bigger than any of the wrappings and packaging, bigger than the sales and the traffic jams, you have to believe in the spirit of giving. You have to believe in the adage that it is better to give than to receive. You have to believe that by giving, no matter what the cost to yourself, you are about to make the world a better place if only for one child for one day.

My youngest son was born on December 4. It makes for an exciting time of year to have a birthday. When he started school and wanted to invite friends to a birthday party and he still believed in all the good that men do I decided to have Santa come to the party. I was fortunate enough to have worked with a jolly man who aside from loading trucks worked as a seasonal Santa. In fact he took off the entire month of December to do it. He had the real beard and let his hair grow and he loved it. He took Christmas in and in turn it glowed out of him.

So there we were the Friday after Thanksgiving with a house decorated to the rafters, lights on in the yard and kids perched on furniture so they would have the best vantage point to see St. Nick arrive when the lights went out. More kids arrived with their parents and siblings in tow so they could all meet Santa and take pictures and tell him what they wanted and how good they had been all year. I was contemplating what places in town would be large enough to accommodate the crowd as the dark that is 4 PM in late November Rhode Island descended without the blink of an electric company repair truck. The photographer used the last moments of light to get a few candid shots off and the kids continued to stack up at the windows.

Some adult or another answered the inevitable question of how Santa would arrive without snow to land the sleigh on while I dragged down the phone book to look up the number for the nearby Papa Gino's. I was jolted out of repeating ABC's in my head when one of the kids yelled, "It's Santa! He just drove by!" There was a rush of little feet and all the little noses pressed to the glass. I stood there dumbfounded as a red pickup truck pulled up in front of the house at the exact second the lights came on. I kid you not! No sooner had his truck come to stop at the curb than every Christmas light outside and in blazed back to life and so did the belief in every soul.

In the years to come my son and his friends who had witnessed the miracle of Santa that day were hard pressed by their piers and siblings not to believe but in their hearts they knew what they had seen on that cold November day and they refused to let go of the real truth. Only last year at the age of 11 did my son come to me and say, with a wavering voice and a tear welling in his eye, "Mom I know you'll tell me the truth..." It broke my heart to say the gifts under the tree were bought by me but I asked him if he remembered that party those few years ago with Santa when the lights came on. He said he did. I told him that was what it was really all about and even though he may not understand the enormity of what happened that day right now he would when he was older and it would make all the difference.

I am 38 years old and I believe in Santa because he is real. Because the spirit in which he was created is real and the spirit in which we do things in his name is real.