Letters to the Editor
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Totally different perspective
I was either 5 or 6 and I really can't recall if I had been told earlier, my mother was trying to tell me and my younger brothers all about Santa Claus and it just didn't seem right to me. You see I had been reading fairy tales for a couple of years by then and I knew one when I heard one. She insisted on continuing to say, Santa is real, you sit on his lap in the mall, just trying to insist Santa was real to me. I was very very angry at my mother for trying to lie to me and tell me Santa was a real person when I knew he was just made up to teach a lesson. I can still recall screaming at her to stop lying to me and I can remember how shocked she was that I didn't believe like all the other little kids (I was also in advanced gifted classes in elementary school, I had already skipped a grade, so your 13 yr old can't really believe in Santa unless she never watches TV, oh and as someone who went through the gifted and talented program and AP courses and graduated early, I can honestly say I'm not that smart, just good at following directions and memorization)and so she apologized and promised to never lie to me again. So instead she made the comparison to when I was playing pretend with my toys, she would still tell me about the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy, even though I knew it was her so I would play along after she said it was all for fun.
I'm perfectly fine with stories and a rich fantasy life, I still love a good fairy tale. I just think it's very dangerous to mix them in with reality. It's like telling children that they should automatically believe everything they hear because it comes from a person of authority.
Christmas time is my favortie holiday and selecting, wrapping and giving gifts to others is one of the most sublime joys I experience every year. I give to charity and to friends who've never given me anything in return, I love Christmas and I didn't need a belief in an actual Santa to bring that love and generosity of spirit.
Believe in magic, I still love fairy tales and greek myths and Harry Potter has a special place in my heart, but I've always known that they are two seperate worlds. I love superheros and comics and cartoons to this day, so no innocence was robbed from me simply because I knew Santa was a storybook character. I was never taught that I had to give up certain things just because I'm older. I often notice that there are plenty of people who prefer to hear a nice lie than the truth that may not be so nice, which is why our politicians never can be really honest, because our constituency does not allow it. The public wants nice stories and policies that sound good but produce no real results. You know, like abstinence education and GPSing molestors for life and 3 strike laws and the unwinnable drug war.
So I don't know if there is a connection, but on the chance there is, there is no way I will tell my kids Santa is a real live person, I will tell them the story of St. Nicholas and that Santa is a storybook character just like Little Red Riding Hood, but I'll also make them swear to not ruin it for other kids because I do think that's mean.
Damn that was long, so LW, yes, she's 13 yrs old, it's time to tell her Santa exists in storybooks and in movies and that it's people who are the real Santas, if she went to the North Pole she wouldn't find a village or a workshop filled with elves.