My son Charlie sat between the couch and the wall after dinner on Christmas Eve. He was 9-years-old. He didn't want his dessert, he had his head in his hands. He was super stressed out, and he demanded to know if Santa was real.
In a high pitched voice filled with anxiety and fear, he demanded, "Please, just tell me if Santa is real, I have to know the truth!" By this time, me and his dad had split up, Charlie and I were living in an apartment a few blocks away, but we always spent Christmas together.
His dad looked at me, and I looked at his dad, and I said, "we have to tell him the truth."
I'd never been a big proponent of Santa Claus. The whole concept of Santa always rang false to me when I was a kid, with my own set of divorced parents. I lived with my dad and step-mom in Massachusetts but would make the rounds with my mom at Christmas time. We'd go see my grandma out in Long Island, my great aunt, my Nona, my mom's cousins in Brooklyn, and at every stop we'd make, there'd be Christmas presents for me from Santa.
It always seemed strange to me that Santa, who was arguably very busy on Christmas Eve, would have time to not just stop at my house in Massachusetts, but would also manage to drop some things off at my relatives' homes where I didn't even live. How did Santa know I would be going to those places? How extensive was that surveillance to determine the naughty and nice list? Didn't he have so many more things to do than make multiple stops just for me? And if he was spreading the gifts around my families' homes, why was he so stingy at my house back home?
Santa was not very big at my house in Massachusetts. My stepmom definitely wanted the credit for the gifts that she'd purchased, and so they were signed from her and my dad. Santa didn't make much of an appearance either in decor or under that tree. I don't even remember seeing a "from Santa" at our house growing up.
So when it came time to have my own child and to decide whether or not we were going to pass on the myth of Santa Claus, I was not wholly in favor of it. I wasn't crazy about lying to the child, and I said so. I told my husband that I didn't think it was a good tradition at all—it was obviously false. But he insisted, and we brought the issue to his dad. My father-in-law, a Jewish man, was the most into Christmas man I'd ever met. He always had the biggest tree, the most gifts, plenty of food, usually a spiral ham, and going to his home at Christmas always felt like a very special occasion.
He'd sit us down, regale us with funny stories. There'd always be plenty to drink and eat, and always so much laughter. This is the man who passed down Santa Claus to me in a real way. He convinced me that Santa was worthwhile, was about giving and faith and a shared legend. And so we began Christmas with the legend of Santa Claus in our home. Big presents were from mom and dad, stockings and the tree were overflowing with Santa gifts.
Charlie had grown up with the idea of Santa Claus. Every Christmas Eve, tucking him into bed, we'd urge him to get to sleep so Santa could come. He'd be nervous that he wouldn't be asleep when Santa would arrive, climbing down the fire escape and into the window—this was Brooklyn, we did not have a chimney. But he was also nervous that Santa was coming at all. It stressed him out to think that a man was climbing into our house late at night, while we were sleeping. Having an old man break into your house at night when you were sleeping was not something this Brooklyn kid was super comfortable with.
This had already come up with the Tooth Fairy. He'd lost his first teeth a few years back, and said "quick, hide them before the Tooth Fairy knows and comes to steal them!" He was adamant that he did not want some lady in a fairy costume wandering into his room while he was sleeping and take his teeth from under his pillow, leaving cash behind. After his dad and I had negotiated Santa, we agreed on all the stories—Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny. Even so, we hid the teeth. The Tooth Fairy never came, and he was very glad.
Before I knew it, he was 9-years-old, demanding answers, and I was faced with the conundrum of breaking that myth or keeping it up. He explained that anticipating Santa made him stressed out because if he wasn't sleeping, there'd be no gifts, but if he was sleeping, there'd basically be a break-in when a strange man broke into your house in the middle of the night, and all of this combined made it impossible to sleep. He confessed that he'd been pretending to sleep on Christmas Eve for all this time.
So we told him the truth. We said, "No, there's no Santa Claus per se, but you'll still get gifts. He wanted reassurance. "Are you sure no one's going to be breaking into the house tonight?" We said no.
"Oh, he said, I am so relieved." And he got up and he ate his dessert. He slept better that Christmas Eve than he ever had on any Christmas Eve in his life. That Christmas was the first we'd had since his grandfather passed, so we couldn't go to him for reassuring words for ourselves, but he'd left a lesson behind with Charlie's dad.
"Even though Santa, the man himself, may not actually be coming into everyone's houses on Christmas Eve," his dad said,"you get to be Santa now for the other kids, to bring joy and kindness. That's what Santa is really about—optimism, hope, the gratitude that comes with giving."
And now at a new town, a new church, Charlie has embraced this idea of giving, volunteering, bringing joy and hope to the little kids, and he knows better than to destroy that legend for any of them. But I wonder how many other kids in Brooklyn or cities all across the US find the idea of an old man breaking into your house at night to be more than a little creepy.
I think maybe this year all the presents under this tree will say "from Santa."
