I swear to this day that I once saw Santa’s sleigh flying across the sky. I was ten years old, old enough to have figured out what was really up with the fat man in the red suit, and yet I swear to this day that I saw him. It was late Christmas Eve and we were driving home from a party, and I was in the back seat of the station wagon wearing a scratchy disco-era party dress, leaning against the window, looking out. It was cold, for South Florida, and the sky was bright with stars, and I was dozing and half dreaming, although I felt wide awake. I saw him, small, but not too small to make out the details — the sleigh, dusted with starlight and fairy dust, and the string of reindeer. That’s when I really figured it out. Belief is an act of will and, like love, it is as much choice as it is feeling. When I was extremely little and believed in Santa Claus it was because I was told he was real, When I was ten, I began to believe in Santa Claus as a choice, an act of faith.
Sometimes I wonder, if faith is a feeling then how can it be a choice? I don’t see faith as a feeling so much as knowledge — but faith, by its very essence, can’t be proven like some scientific theorem, nor can it be disproved — and that’s where magic comes in. By choosing to still believe in Santa, I admit that there’s stuff I can never, and will never, completely understand.
When my kids were very young, I figured it out even more. Not only was my belief in Santa a choice — now it was time to bring my belief into the real world. Not just the shopping and the hiding presents and the wrapping, although those things are important, but also with the stuff that was a bigger challenge — the extra effort to make everything special at Christmas. Reading Christmas books out loud at bedtime when there are a thousand other things I need to be doing. Keeping the chaos, magnified by the holiday, under control. Keeping a level head when my kids, up too late, and stuffed with far too many sugar plums, dance around like rabid hyenas. That Elf on the Shelf: he’s not just watching the kids. He’s keeping an eye on all of us, even me. My actions count.
I wonder, sometimes, what our Christmas is going to look like when my kids are old enough to look behind the velvet curtain. On the one hand, I’ll be heartbroken. I know this was likely the last year I’d be able to see my son’s eyes get huge as he sits on Santa’s lap, tells him he’s been good, and asks for what he wants. On the other hand, the Christmas is coming, right around the corner, when my kids will be old enough to understand why we do it all — the baking, the shopping, and above all, the giving. I’ll be able to teach my children what it really means to believe.
Elizabeth Rose is a stay-at-home mom, cancer survivor, and writer. You can find her blog at Dance with the Reaper.com, and her column Christmas Tango here every week at Christmased.com.
