We all grew up with Santa Claus. Sure, he’s the guy on tv, the friendly fat guy in the red suit with the white beard and the rosy cheeks, Big sled, little hat, Rudolph and his pals?
Most Americans meet Santa early, at photo booths in shopping malls. $10 gets folks a shot of their wailing children on Santa’s knee clutching at Santa’s fake whiskers with sticky hands. He’s the guy with the sad, tired eyes, whose beard is held on by string and a little bit of glue, and who smells kind of like the back seat of Grandpa’s Plymouth.
But as children we forgive these Santas. We have faith. The world of adults is a complex one, and who knows why Santa would choose to wear a fake beard? We figure he must have his reasons.
We stay up as late as we can, staring into the night sky, looking for him, for the lights of his sled, for the ringing of his bells.
It usually isn’t around two or three Christmases later, when Santa forgets behind a set of dollhouse instructions on the living room table that you begin to grow suspicious. Why would Santa need instructions? you ask your parents. “Have you looked at the thing?” your father replies. “There’s like a billion pieces. A shop full of elves couldn’t build that it an evening without directions,” he says, to your mother.
A year later you find a cache of wrapped gifts in the hallway closet and Mom says Santa asked her to keep them there. In case he was running late. Santa. The guy with flying reindeer.
It isn’t that you’re naturally skeptical. You want to believe. But it seems like your parents have stopped really even trying.
The year after that your dad tells you that this Christmas, Santa’s doing all his shopping on Amazon, so if you’ve got any special wishes, put your orders in early because it takes 3 to 4 weeks delivery.
And then one evening during a drive home from the beach in mid summer you announce to your mother that you don’t believe in Santa anymore. It was Mom and Dad all along and you don’t know if you ever really believed in it, deep down. Mom acts disappointed but she’s also a little relieved, because she was starting to worry that you were getting a little old. Maybe your childish naivety at this stage of development was really evidence of cognitive impairment.
And from then on it’s out. Everybody talks about it. It’s a part of the culture. A fantasy friend from our childhood that we’re happy to welcome back every Christmas season.
You never ask your parents directly why they lied to you all those years. In a way, your grateful for it. Most of us will turn around and lie to our children too.