I Believe., The free spirit from the North Pole? Options

[Daddy's Litt...]

My husband penned this over the weekend looking at our little girls. The oldest is 2 3/4 years old. this is her sister's first Christmas.

In a game world where we talk about spirts manifesting and all. it is hard not to agree at once with his point.


Here we are in late December and images of Father Christmas decorate lawns and malls. Signs on the road invite you to have a visit from Santa at a certain place and time.

The thought becomes this is all for the small children who believe and not for those of us who ‘know better’ but I find myself asking why would you not believe? This is a time of miracles and wonder.

OK the idea of a 2000 year old Turkish bishop living at the North Pole with toy making elves able to visit every home in a single night is far fetched to the point that talking heads on TV “prove” how fast someone would have to travel to do that.

But why is this supposed to be so? Why do we think little children need to ‘grow up’ to learn the ‘truth?’ Look at a small child meeting Santa and the joy and wonder in her face. That is real. The cynicism isn’t real. It is a thought because we do not understand. We have a need to know WHY and lose the ability to just accept IS. And as we cannot understand the WHY to our pitiful brains’ satisfaction we just said ‘ISN’T’ and feel smug and secure in our ignorance fueled stupidity. But look at that child. She understands that it just is.

A flesh and blood man living millennia. OK a bit far fetched but is that all Santa is? When you think of the good that is “Santa” you do not think of someone in a faux fur suit, maybe with false whiskers. You think of the joy and happiness he brings or at least is the embodiment of.

Look at charities. At what happens at lunches or dinners for the poor or for children in hospitals, or at a church gathering or just the neighborhood. The man in the red suit is probably a local policeman or sports figure or a neighbor or dad and they know this most likely, but for those moments when he wears the suit and walks the walk, he is Santa and all that means. the joy and the spirit it moves through him. At an office party or soldiers overseas someone puts on a red hat and says “I’ll be Santa” and while everyone knows it’s still really ‘Mike” and people laugh at it, they laugh. Someone goes to sing Christmas carols and puts on a Santa hat to look ‘seasonal.’ They smile and they know it’s just kidding but while that is going on they are feeling joy and the silliness the age allows.

So how is that not real? Maybe there isn’t some senior citizen living at the North Pole, but how do you say there isn’t a spirit of the holiday? It takes the form of an elderly man in a red suit with a white beard. Its appearance brings joy and a sense of mirth that we do not have but wish we did all the year long. Not just a sense that we get but we give. We are moved to share with those who have less, to make their plight a little better, not because we get a tax break but because we want to help someone else.

That is the Christmas Spirit and it is real. When else could you even consider getting together with a group of complete strangers and sing songs just because you wanted to? That joy and generosity is shared and those who do not partake we look on with pity for ‘not getting it.’ This is the Christmas spirit we all feel or want to feel, from high to low, whether living at home with family or on some far frontier posting. If we don’t feel it we want to and beloved TV “‘specials” focus on Grinches or misers or round headed little boys who want to find it or don’t understand it.

It is real and when it manifests it does so as a jolly man we call “Santa Claus” or “Father Christmas” or “Kris Kringle” or “Pere Noel” a host of other names but all of which are at once recognized by adults and children alike. “Not real?” “Know better?” How can you say that? Clearly he is real and the truly wise among us do not question ‘how’ or ‘why’ but accept ‘is.’

As was written by a truly wise man in New York more than a century ago: “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

And me? More than a century after a little girl was told that if you could read it in the Sun it was so,

I believe.