Maybe...yes?:
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I’ve never had much of an opinion, one way or the other, about whether my kids should believe in Santa.
We’ve
always played along with the story in our house, but my four older kids
– all sons – have believed to varying ages: the oldest two boys, now 16
and 14, gave it up by the second grade or so, while my second two, now
10 and 8, still claim to believe, but have begun to make it clear it’s
all for show.
The way I’ve always seen it, Santa is about the
experience a child needs during the holiday, not the parents. If a child
really wants to believe, she will cling to the Saint Nick story until
the bitter end, pretending she didn’t really see those toys marked “FROM
SANTA” in the back of the minivan that one night Mom and Dad went
shopping alone, and convincing herself to believe lame excuses like,
“Oh, Santa asked for our help picking this one out” when parents make a
faux pas. I know, because I’ve been that kid.
And, in my
experience with my four boys, kids who don’t care as much, whose
childlike belief in the magic of the holiday isn’t tied up in this one
particular aspect of it, seem to give up the belief readily and without
much fuss, letting themselves be easily convinced by a more cynical
friend, or noticing with eyes unclouded by sentiment that the Santa
wrapping paper has been in a Target bag in the hall closet for the last
month.
So when the yearly “should you tell your kids about Santa
or is the whole thing a huge, disillusionment-inducing way to lie to
your kids” debate rages, I’ve mostly stayed on the sidelines. After all,
I’ve never jumped through any crazy hoops to extend my kids’ belief, or
done much at all except go along with whatever they seem to feel about
the jolly old elf. As a Santa-neutral mom, I’ve always felt like I was
safe from judgment and not particularly interested in joining the fray.
But.
My 5-year-old daughter, Clara, I fear, is about to throw a wrench into this whole theory.
Clara
is imaginative. She loves fairies and fantasy and magic and
play-pretend. Clara also asks a lot of questions and seems to notice
everything, remembering with awe-inspiring clarity that one offhand
comment I made about maybe getting ice cream next week, or the fact that
she asked for a particular Littlest Pet Shop raccoon six months before
her birthday. (Of course I got the squirrel instead. Seriously, they all
look the same to me.)
Maybe it won’t be this year. Maybe it won’t be next year. But
soon – and with a persistence and inquisitiveness that will surely try
everyone’s patience – I know this to be true: Clara’s going to start
asking tough questions about the Big Man In The Red Suit. And I’m just
not sure how I’m going to handle it. After all, Clara is the baby of the
family, the youngest of five. She represents the fleetingness of
childhood, and has marked my final opportunities to experience the
holiday through the eyes of a baby, a toddler, and now, a little girl.
And this year, along with the warm buzz that always accompanies my
favorite holiday, I feel an underlying sense of dread.
Will this
be the last year she believes? Next year? Or the year after that?
Whenever it happens, the day of truth is coming, and I don’t feel nearly
as nonchalant about it as I did with the boys.
When you have a
number of small children in the house, it can still feel like you have
all the time in the world for make-believe and magic. But as it turns
out, the number of firsts and lasts, of holidays all under one roof, of
the times you’ll string popcorn or cut out cookies, of times you’ll wrap
a gift and scrawl “Santa” in the “From” line on the tag, are painfully
limited whether you have one child or 10.
I spent years longing
to get to that light at the end of the tunnel: the time when all my kids
would be bigger and more self-sufficient, when life would feel more
orderly, when I’d have some time for myself. And I’m glad to be here.
Still, Santa, like baby dolls and board books, LEGO and little shoes, is
just one more symbol of a chapter firmly closing, its magic and mystery
tightly caught between the pages. Once it’s closed, I can go back and
re-read, but I can’t ever live it again. And Clara’s eventual evolution
from belief to understanding will mark the definite end of an era.
In
my imagination, I see myself clinging to Clara’s belief with all sorts
of sitcom-worthy hijinks: stamping loudly around on the roof Christmas
Eve, shaking bells loudly near Clara’s window; hiring a stout actor to
be “caught” placing presents under the tree in a carefully-staged hoax.
In reality, though, I will probably treat her waning belief the same way
I’ve handled it with the other kids…at first, answering their questions
with “What do YOU think?” then stalling, and finally, when the truth
can no longer be delayed or camouflaged, coming out with it as gently as
I can.
But
somewhere, something inside me will wilt a little at the admission, the
white-flag surrender to children growing up and growing older, moving
on and eventually, moving out. I’ll wish for a time when I could
casually hold their beliefs in my palms, shaping and embellishing at
will.
And if I have to be honest, I’ll likely shed more than a few tears for the enlightenment of the last believer.
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