Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: he has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy.
With full hearts, people like Daddy and me take our turns helping Santa do a job that would otherwise be impossible.
So, no. I am not Santa. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too.
The second, by Kathryn Harrison, begins with her own complicated relationship with her usually absent mom who appeared at Christmas to carefully and lovingly fill her stocking. Then Harrison details the different reactions of her children to the existence of Santa as well as the Tooth Fairy.
As a mother, I never thought to ask myself how long I should try to preserve the lie of Santa Claus — as long as possible, I assumed. Stockings remained the part of Christmas I loved best, and I began collecting trifles for our three children as early as August. Setting out the cookies, pouring the cocoa, reading “The Night Before Christmas,” for years their father and I stirred the children into a frenzy of anticipation so intense they couldn’t fall asleep. At three o’clock on Christmas morning they were trampling us in our bed, chattering and squealing and pointing out the window at the spot in the sky where they’d seen a reindeer-drawn sleigh streak past the stars.
And then her son is chagrined that she didn't tell him the truth, while her older daughter holds on to the myths despite evidence to the contrary. Harrison and her youngest daughter seem to agree on agnosticism, neither knowing or not knowing if Santa is real or not. Which is exactly the answer I have given my kids the times they have already asked about Santa: "I don't know, Bud and Sis. Lots of people believe in Santa. I've never seen him, but I know that someone delivers presents." And the older I get, the more I'm with Brockenbrough: I'm on Santa's team now, too.
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